The battle between the modern 'Left' and 'Right' is pure theater. It’s a false choice designed to keep us arguing over who holds the leash while we remain wage slaves. It would be interesting if some of those individuals could have been more convincing 150 years ago
Not true, the battle between wealthy and poor is the propaganda. In reality where revolution did occur, poor were used to battle the rich, so the communist party could enrich it self. By destroying the rich, they also destroyed the economy and made poor even poorer.
maybe i'm doing a No True Scotsman, but i can't see where the Left has ever been against the poors. I thought the the origin of the terms Left and Right was For Democracy (the poors have a voice), and For the King (the wealthies) from the French Revolution. How is 'wealthies vs poors' different from left vs right'?
I appreciate the acknowledgement ofthe 'No True Scotsman' trap. It is easy to define a side by its ideals (e.g., 'The Left is for the poor'), but the reality is that both sides muck it up the moment they take control.
Neither side actually supports the poor because both are funded by and literally are the wealthy masters. The evidence is in the trends/facts that for almost 50 years the wealth gap has only widened, regardless of who is in charge. At some point, we have to accept that the 'which side is right' argument is false.
Neither of the two major parties in US politics supports the poor.
Elsewhere there are broader choices in national politics.
eg: the current Prime Minister of Australia grew up with a single mother on a disability pension in council housing. His actions and politics are at least informed by real life experience as one of "the poor".
Depends how you define it and wether you’re defining it as intentionally en masse or as a byproduct of pure self interest regardless of anything else.
There’s plenty of examples, the most famous one in my opinion is that the popularity of legislation is irrelevant for passage, support by wealthy is. Similarly how the vast majority of people obtain political office is by and large courting the influence of wealthy donors (source - the amount of money being spent in politics and particularly dark money). Also how “lobbying” works even in the Supreme Court and pay to play by definition is politically battling the poor.
Obamacare is of no use at all for the wealthy. So why do those in power support it?
Everybody says that money buys elections. But consider that Hillary outspent Trump 2:1 and lost, Harris outspent Trump 3:1 and still lost. Bloomberg poured money into his presidential bid, and he didn't garner enough votes to be a blip on the radar.
Campaign money does buy you a stage, but it doesn't buy the votes.
> Obamacare is of no use at all for the wealthy. So why do those in power support it?
They... Didn't? It's been defanged and reduced to the aberration it is right now, instead of being single payer, universal healthcare.
> Everybody says that money buys elections. But consider that Hillary outspent Trump 2:1 and lost, Harris outspent Trump 3:1 and still lost. Bloomberg poured money into his presidential bid, and he didn't garner enough votes to be a blip on the radar.
> Campaign money does buy you a stage, but it doesn't buy the votes.
Without campaign money you have no chance at all, could you run a successful presidential campaign on 1/10th or 1/100th of the budget given you had a hypothetical bright candidate, someone that could objectively be a much better president than any of the moneyed ones? No, hence campaign money does buy votes, it just doesn't buy them completely but without campaign money you have absolutely no chance.
Sooo...Harris' failure to win proves that money doesn't win elections...you do realize that her opponent also had to spend dozens of millions to even be able to compete, right?
Really hard to imagine how you aren't being willfully ignorant on this. Money doesn't win elections. It just puts you in the only possible position where one can win. Those are your own words, yet you somehow conclude that money doesn't win elections? Money literally decides what choice WE HAVE in an election. You cannot vote for someone who doesn't have the extreme wealth required to compete. & someone who isn't competing, isn't a choice given to voters.
Electricity doesn't make computers run, pushing the on button does!
Sure, money buys a stage, and an outsized stage for a worse idea is still persuading many more voters than a smaller stage with a better idea. If one campaign saturates communication it drowns others, this is what money buys on political campaigns (especially in the US).
Where I vote money doesn't play much of a part in elections so no chance for my vote to be bought; in the USA, a society much less politically active and educated, money goes a much longer way to persuade, convince, deceive, and outright lie to voters. Hence so many Trump voters coming out of the woodwork to say "I didn't vote for this".
Both sides say that voters who didn't vote for their favorite candidate because they are uneducated fools and deplorable.
> If one campaign saturates communication it drowns others, this is what money buys on political campaigns (especially in the US).
Carly Fiona is another example of a big spender that got trounced in the polls.
BTW, no matter how much campaign money is spent by socialist candidates, I will never vote for them. If all the candidates on the ballot are socialists, I will turn in my ballot with no vote on it. My vote is not for sale.
You know about statistics and how population-wise aggregate data can be skewed given you know which levers to press and where, I don't know why you play dumb about money in politics being a massive influence. Nowhere is said "money buys YOUR vote", money does influence votes, it does influence people who are less educated (or less politically engaged) who watches ad after ad pushing the precise button they need to be pushed to tilt scales.
I don't care about your view on socialist candidates, it doesn't pertain to this discussion whatsoever. People would vote for a socialist candidate who said the right stuff to them, that's just how the statistics work.
> Obamacare is of no use at all for the wealthy. So why do those in power support it?
Health insurance companies love it.
> Campaign money does buy you a stage, but it doesn't buy the votes.
You literally just talked about how the people everyone got to select from are those that could raise billions for a campaign. Hell the current president is a billionaire - literally the wealthy - and staffed important posts by other wealthy people. Congress is stacked by wealthy people, in no small part because the salary for congress is not commensurate with the responsibility it has.
Also, your numbers seem off for the Harris v Trump campaign (not what I’m seeing looking online) but it doesn’t matter (I highlight where you may have made the error below).
> Nobody has ever bought my vote. How about you?
No one serious about this issue suggests that they hand out money for votes. Well Elon actually did engage in that in this prior election cycle in swing states so there is that undermining your rhetorical comment.
But it’s also the height of naïveté to either not believe advertising/marketing (aka propaganda) works (you know, the trillion billion dollar companies of Google and Facebook) or to believe that politics is somehow immune from its effects as well (which requires ignoring how political movements work or what we learned about propaganda and its efficacy in WWII). And all of that takes big $. Of the 1.2B Kamala raised, 40% was small dollar donations. Of the 400M Trump raised, only 133M was small dollar donations (28.8%). Note: if this is where you’re getting the 3:1 number you’re not reading the data correctly - democrats spent ~1.9B total vs Republicans 1.6B and Trump directly spent >900M (presumably carrying over the donations from the previous campaign? Not sure).
And again - I’ll refer you to the research showing the general popularity of a proposal is irrelevant to it getting passed. How popular it is among wealthy does have that effect. And it again, you seem to struggle when I say this and try to point out some particular piece of legislation - it’s percentages. It doesn’t matter if it’s not an absolute. You don’t need to win every battle to win the war.
Anyway, Walter you’re a smart guy. I expect more from you than rudely dismissive comments that insinuate committing a crime is the only way money and wealth can influence and “buy” politics (and ignoring that Republicans did attempt to do so this past cycle)
Oh and I suggest you look at how advertising works. It’s classic 0 sum game. If you and I spend 0 on advertising, the outcome is the same as if we both spent $100 on advertising (assuming equivalent efficiency of conversion). However if you spend $100 and I spend 0 you capture the market. If you outspend 2:1 you’ll get 2/3 of the market (roughly). Obviously efficiency of the spend is also important, but it’s literally a 0 sum information war between competitors. If you didn’t think it mattered, you’d have to explain why companies spend hundreds of millions on advertising - that would be money more efficiently invested somewhere else.
Is there any case where this is remotely even true?! The way advertising budget is spent always has an enormous impact on the outcome.
One competitor spends in print, another on TV. One competitor targets young professionals, another families with kids. One competitor goes to best and most famous agency but buys the cheapest package and fights any decision, another gets a genius kid at the beginning of his career to create a most brilliant TikTok ad. Etc...
For the purposes of a simplified discussion it’s true enough. It’s also true enough in the commercial context for the biggest players. For example, Coke and Pepsi spend similar amounts of advertising and the market share isn’t really changing. But that’s also because the products are very mature and in repeated games the players are likely to reach a stale mate (and the talent pool for the advertising teams is largely the same).
Political contexts are obviously different because it’s constantly one off contests and the teams behind it constantly change. So yes, obviously efficacy of advertising matters. But I don’t see how my simplification meaningfully changes the point that money significantly impacts voting at scale in our society. This wasn’t the gotcha I think you thought it was.
Advertising is necessary to sell a product. Campaign money is necessary to buy you a stage. But if you don't like the product, you aren't going to buy it.
> Congress is stacked by wealthy people, in no small part because the salary for congress is not commensurate with the responsibility it has.
LOL, it seems they get wealthy after they get elected to Congress. (I wonder how that happens!)
> rudely dismissive comments that insinuate committing a crime is the only way money and wealth can influence
I don't know where you got that from.
I don't recall ever voting for someone because they spent more money on their campaign.
If elections are being bought, it's not by the campaign money, it's by the taxpayer money. I.e. the "chicken in every pot" promise to give people free stuff.
> I’ll refer you to the research showing the general popularity of a proposal is irrelevant to it getting passed.
I don't doubt that, but we're talking about an election, not passing legislation. The only election poll that matters is the final vote (note that a lot of people do not bother to vote).
You have such an exceedingly narrow definition of what it means when people say that money buys elections that I’m realizing it’s pointless to try to have a conversation.
> LOL, it seems they get wealthy after they get elected to Congress. (I wonder how that happens!)
Some yes. Insider trading is a problem. But I think you’d be surprised how many people who are already rich then enter politics. They may grow their wealth even more after but they start of supremely wealthy to begin with, not least of which because that also implies a network of rich people who will help you.
> If elections are being bought, it's not by the campaign money, it's by the taxpayer money. I.e. the "chicken in every pot" promise to give people free stuff.
So money selecting which candidates you can vote on isn’t money buying elections, but policy arguments over how to spend the public purse is buying the public? That’s like having the position that a toddler has a choice when you ask them would they like broccoli or celery - you’ve predefined their choices for them and given them the illusion of choice.
> I don't know where you got that from.
“No one bought my vote, how about you” is dismissive and rude, not least of which because I’m sure you know buying votes is a crime. It’s not the effective rhetorical device you think it is. It’s also horribly undermined precisely because politics has gotten so messed up Republicans are bold enough to literally trying this strategy now.
> I don't doubt that, but we're talking about an election, not passing legislation
Actually, no. This conversation started with your bold claim: “Can you show us how the wealthy are battling the poor?”. You’re now trying to shift the goal posts claiming it’s only about elections.
> You have such an exceedingly narrow definition of what it means when people say that money buys elections that I’m realizing it’s pointless to try to have a conversation.
The definition of "buy" according to google: "obtain in exchange for payment." I accept the standard definition of words, not made up definitions. It's not possible to have a debate when words are redefined.
> “No one bought my vote, how about you” is dismissive and rude, not least of which because I’m sure you know buying votes is a crime.
Do you know of anyone who was paid for their vote? or anyone who was offered payment for their vote?
He’s had to repeatedly tweak the wording of the payment to stay away from a textbook definition of vote buying, but it’s certainly violating the spirit of the law.
> The definition of "buy" according to google: "obtain in exchange for payment." I accept the standard definition of words, not made up definitions. It's not possible to have a debate when words are redefined.
Only if you treat the English language as something that you can understand the meaning by combining the meaning of individual words and that words only ever have one possible meaning. For example, if I say “you’re a horse’s ass” am I claiming that you are literally the rear end of a horse? Or am I claiming that you’re a donkey owned by a horse? Or am I using a euphemism to describe obnoxious behavior?
But anyway. This is getting way off the mark. You’ve hyper focused on one thing (election outcomes) ignoring the larger point about whether there is a class war going on (raising Obamacare which was a compromise from Medicare for all and has been repeatedly gutted but also ignoring the defunding of SNAP and various other programs this year that are disproportionately hitting the poor while wealthy are getting a huge tax break on inheritance taxes due to Trump’s bill this year - how again are the wealthy not getting what they want at the expense of everyone else?)
I've posted numerous examples of politicians attempting to "buy" an election and then losing the election. The reason an election cannot be bought in the US is because we have a secret ballot (besides being illegal). There's no way to verify who Bob actually voted for.
> wealthy are getting a huge tax break on inheritance taxes
The inheritance tax rate remains the same. The gift tax exemption was raised from 11 million to 15 million. This is going to affect the upper middle class, but not so much on the wealthy.
Medicare has hardly been gutted. It needs to be cut more, as it is still on track to sink the budget.
You could do some basic research on this topic, it's been exhaustively covered over the past few centuries, but I'll drop you three starting points.
Pushing the tax burden for upkeeping society off people who own more shit than any of us ever will onto people who have to work for a living.
Legal protection and structural advantages for landlord interests over tenant interests.
Legal protection and structural advantages for employer interests over employee interests vis a vis wage theft, worker safety, worker injuries, etc.
There are many others, but even a brief summary of injustice in any one of these topics is big enough for ~a few hundred books, and alas, the margins of this website are too small to contain them.
> Legal protection and structural advantages for landlord interests over tenant interests.
Rent control is not in the landlord's business. In Seattle, the other legislation against landlords is pushing them out of business.
> Pushing the tax burden for upkeeping society off people who own more shit than any of us ever will onto people who have to work for a living.
1% pay 40% of the federal income tax.
Google [percent of federal government spending spent on wealth redistribution] says: "A significant portion of U.S. federal spending, around 60-70%, goes to social insurance and safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Income Security, which function as wealth redistribution by supporting retirees, the needy, and vulnerable populations, though the exact "wealth redistribution" percentage varies by definition but centers on these large mandatory spending categories. In FY 2024, Social Security and Medicare alone were 36% of the budget, with Income Security adding another ~9-10%."
> Legal protection and structural advantages for employer interests over employee interests vis a vis wage theft, worker safety, worker injuries, etc.
The legal advantage again is for the employee. For example, wage theft is illegal and is aggressively prosecuted.
> Rent control is not in the landlord's business... Seattle... Landlords going out of business...
And you immediately demonstrate why having a conversation with you on this subject is pointless.
There's a million different dimensions in which the problem that I've pointed at manifests. But what you do is you cherry-pick one particular dimension of it in one particular municipality in one particular time period[1], claim that that dimension is (allegedly) biased in the other direction, and thus you reach the universal conclusion that clearly landlords are the real victims[2], and you can just sweep the entire issue off the table.
I don't have enough words to describe how incurious and chock-full-of-fallacies this kind of thinking is.
You already know everything that you feel you need to, and there's nothing more that needs to be said. It's like you have found the number 2, and conclude that therefore, most numbers are even primes.
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[1] Actually, you don't do even that. You just vaguely wave your hands in its direction.
[2] Kind of weird that the market values their real estate to be worth twice what it was a decade ago if they are getting such a raw deal. I'm sure PE is snapping up rental properties because they are money-losing investments, too. After all, serious people who have done the math and are putting billions of dollars into this (and are reaping profits on their investments hand-over-fist) must all be too stupid to understand just how awful renting out property is.
> And you immediately demonstrate why having a conversation with you on this subject is pointless.
That's because my positions are correct.
BTW, rent control in 9 states is statewide, and is commonplace in cities.
Google [does seattle provide free lawyers for tenants?] for more examples.
For more,
In California, over 35 cities and counties have implemented long-term rent control ordinances for residential rental housing. In addition, since Jan. 1, 2020, the California Tenant Protection Act has extended rent caps and eviction restrictions to many properties not governed by local ordinances.
Google also reports:
Tens of thousands of NYC rent-stabilized apartments are vacant, with estimates varying from around 26,000 to over 60,000, often described as "warehoused," because strict rent caps (especially after 2019 laws) make costly renovations financially unviable for landlords, leading to units sitting empty rather than being rented or sold. While some vacancies are for legitimate repairs, many are held off-market as owners await the ability to renovate and raise rents, contributing to the city's housing shortage, say housing advocates and reports.
And yet, investors and landlords are scooping up every rental property they can, and are as a class, making mountains of money in those states.
It's wild that as a whole they are so advantaged that they are still net-in the green when they let properties sit empty and unused.
It's just as wild that you continue digging deeper. Reality in the big picture isn't compatible with your 'correct' viewpoint, so you keep drilling down to microdetails.
No profits == no business. Profits in very competitive markets might be low, but you still need them to survive.
Walmart is under 6% of profit, but due to the enormous revenue it is still a lot.
That’s not the question, it’s where do profits come from in the economic equation? What part of the value chain is adding but not subtracting its full cut?
As Hayek proved the information in free markets is encoded by prices, so the value is up to the consenting parties. There is no "good" or "bad" or "improper" profit. If there is competition and willing parties that's where the profit will be. It will go down to something more or less sustainable for the market participants that are willing to work for that profit.
Sure, there may be a price a customer is willing to pay, but how does the business owner make a profit? Aren't there other people being paid too? If they are paid less, doesn't that sound more like a negotiating position than mere "information" signals?
Free market countries are more abundant than non-free market ones because the system is brutally efficient. If you can't sell something for a profit, you might be forced to sell it for a loss and eat the difference. This is the way the system regulates itself.
The business owners invest their resources and own the risk. Employees sell their work hours by a fixed price and this is calculated in the total cost for the business to sell. The price their work is bought by is also regulated by free market and is an input to the total price. They aren't forced to be paid less than the going market rate (may be short term until contract expires) so the prices and unforced cooperation based on price it shte "magic" that makes USA to have 100s of types of biscuits and Cuba to have empty stores.
Having needs is not the same as slavery. Wage slavery is described as such because of the power imbalance between employer and worker, who has limited agency to find another employer, with whom he would also have a relationship with a power imbalance.
A wealthy man who receives a check for dividends and interest most months is not subject to such power imbalances. Wealth makes him free.
It's not an argument that socialism would enable people to just live off a public dividend, so to speak. Somebody has to work, and workplaces require discipline. Rather it's an argument for better labor safety controls, and a personal appeal to people to save as much money as they can.
I've been an employer. I didn't have any power over my employees. If there was anything they didn't like, they simply stopped coming to work. How was I supposed to make them show up?
One embezzled a large amount of money and spent it on drugs. What was I supposed to do about that? He was broke, he couldn't pay the money back. All I could do was tell him to not come back.
I've also been employed at minimum wage jobs, and salaried jobs. I never felt the employer had power over me. At my salaried jobs, my coworkers complained about all the power the company had over them. The company had no power over me, so I would ask them what the power was. After some long conversations, the problem was the coworkers spent every dime of their income. So not having a paycheck for a week was a catastrophe. The company, however, was unaware of these issues.
I recommend saving up to 6 months of living expenses, and then the employer will have no leverage over you.
A lot of people forget that going hungry is the default state of not doing a thing. The super rich and socially progressive societies redistribute the taxes they levy on the productive people to help the people who can not (elderly, ill) or won't (lazy bastards) work.
It might be a better deal for the society as a whole, to offset the cirme that would ensue if there isn't any social net.
A lion in the plains of Africa is not entitled to a dinner, the farmer in not entitled to a crop yield. It is super rare that people can't do anything to better themselves and get more for their own skills or execution. Any buisness owner will gladly share a percentage of profit you generate for them if you can show them you're indeed generating such profit.
If you're in DPRK or Cuba then you'd need to check your free-market priviledge of having a market for your skills.
It's not the social safety, but the bad enforcement of the law. When bad acts are not punished, this is the problem that occurs.
Some social systems like in Israel if you're ablebodied you are given a public service job, like cleaning the park and etc... so you aren't entitled to a check for doing nothing.
South Africa hasn't any meaningful social net and the wealthy people live in special "high security" enclaves with additional guards and fenced perimeters. If you have a lot of hungry people on the street they will be forced to survive somehow and you'd get more crime.
This is part of the false dichotomy you are not understanding. It's not actually a valid choice if there are no options. And that is what this is actually about, understanding how we have no good options, and what to do about it. I recommend start digging in and we all question or own understanding and acceptance of the system. Is it actually working with even a simple majority in the best position we can be?
Currently employing 130 wage slaves and unduly profiting from their margins, and not satisfied with the overall system at all.
Asking this question leads me to suspect you have no true curiosity or willingness to learn a new perspective as it's literally a Google away. And then you will reply in another direction that justifies your narrow world view that is of course justified 100% by your experience. This is not effective discourse and I see you doing it all over.
It’s a well-documented economic concept. You can find plenty on it if you're actually curious about the perspective. And understanding it thoroughly is a strong prerequisite to seriously engaging with other people with intent to learn. It's work you need do yourself.
It's 30F outside right now, and I can live a lot longer without food than without shelter.
You are just playing at word games. The system is trapping the have-nots into unpleasant, lifelong conditions, and that's what "wage slave" means. As you know.
Roborock. From what I can tell they seem to be the leader.
I wanted something that worked in 100% darkness, and LIDAR delivers that. So I don’t have to go around turning on lights, and I don’t have to worry it will get lost because I didn’t turn on lights.
Most things are a wash. The app is a little better than I remember the iRobot app being.
The auto empty dock works fine, the Roomba could tell you when the dock was full which I do miss. But that’s not an issue.
The mopping system doesn’t work for me due to how deep my carpet is. When the robot lifts the mop to travel it still hits my carpet. The Roomba system looks better where it lifts the mop all the way above the robot.
But I don’t care about the mop. That was just built-in so I tried it.
I’m happy I made the switch. I wish I didn’t have to. I was perfectly happy with my Roomba other than the navigation issue. But it was killer.
> The mopping system doesn’t work for me due to how deep my carpet is. When the robot lifts the mop to travel it still hits my carpet. The Roomba system looks better where it lifts the mop all the way above the robot.
The DreameBot L20 Ultra can disconnect its mops and leave them in the dock. Roborock's Q Revo seems like it was based on the DreameBot L10s Ultra, so I've seen some guesses that it may eventually come to Roborock as well.
When CA first required high efficacy lighting in kitchens via Title 24 in 2010, it was a train wreck, there were no good options and it got a bad name. Slowly they were required throughout new construction in tightening requirements every three years. Then technology caught up and the quality, flexibility, color and lumen options have far exceeded incandescent bulbs. Now people are doing things never imagined (as discussed somewhat awkwardly in the article) with LEDs spurred in part by legislation that pushed the technology from behind. Perhaps one of the few times technology didn't create the product and market. Legislation has created the market, and technology responded. Doesn't usually work out that way...
Now however, the new control requirements are ridiculous and add far more cost than will ever be recouped. Most likely since these requirements were planned back when California used 90 percent more electricity for lighting, it seems rather useless especially in the face of our unaffordable housing. Hopefully I am wrong there but it seems we went a bit too far.
I am squarely in the business and there are successful and failed startups everywhere. It is dynamic, challenging but there is defintely no shortage of people succeeding. Perhaps the startups just dont have the buzz or respect?
Many successful ones are already mentioned, like Procore for example. There are many more focusing in the data collection and modeling space including BIM. For example, there are still tremendous opportunities solving little problems with data collection and selling to Trimble. Or automating tasks in software and selling to Autodesk. Or add CAD like tools to a PDF reader and sell that for a hundred million (BlueBeam). The list is pretty endless, no shortage there. I believe the shortage is perhaps the humble humans that understand construction thoroughly AND understand technology to a level that would allows a bridge between the two to be constructed.
My favorite failed unicorn startup in this space that I believe demonstrates the difficulty of construction is Katerra. I personally dealt with them as a vendor and immediately knew they would fail even before Softbank gave them a billion dollars. The hubris was off the charts. A bunch of tech people that tried to hire people in the business but just couldn't understand the scale of difficulties or challenges. I must admit they generated a fair amount of schadenfreude in me.
Interesting note on Katerra, if you visit DPR’s headquarters in Sacramento, there is a vision statement on the wall from around 99 stating their intent to become to construction what HP had been to computers - winning by driving the cutting edge with smart innovation. Not so different from the Katerra pitch, except that DPR is run by seasoned construction professionals who want to leverage lessons from tech - not technocrats who think the building industry needs to be told what to do.
I am in horizontal construction (in Australia) and it is pretty much the same story. The key is having a person who can relate to both the corporate & project people, and has the understanding to translate that into a useful product. Quite rare it seems.
OP here. Parent of 3, ages 12, 15 and 18 navigating this issue irl. Although I believe good parents aren't super rigid on any issue, I feel pretty strongly on this one. It's the parents responsibility and it's hard since it requires your good example. No phone, age 0 to 10-12, to the Lightphone (absolutely love this product) age 13 to 16-18, to a smart phone. I believe the progression is pushed off as long as possible and allows for a manageable transition to responsible use of a necessary evil. To restrictive and your kid goes off the rails at 18 or earlier. Too permissive...pretty obvious what happens.
I'd love to hear more on how this has been working out for you and your kids. Do they seem to grasp why you have these rules in place? Was there any pushback from their side? Did they ever complain about being left out of social circles because of these rules?
I'm not a parent, but this seems an awfully important issue to get right when it comes to children.
Not OP, but I'll chime in. For us, Islam plays a central role in how we conduct our lives and affairs. While our children are younger than OP's, they already grasp why we do certain things, and why we don't necessarily follow what everyone else does, even though it may appear to be fun at first glance. And if everyone else is jumping off of a bridge, if doesn't make sense for us to follow blindly does it?
We also amend with family and community interaction as much as we can, as well as constantly engaging with them and teaching them that they can trust us in anything that is on their mind. Bringing up how we were raised seems to also aid (e.g. we show them kids shows that we grew up with, we mention that we didn't have cell phones as children, talk about our parents and grandparents times, etc.). I see some parents leaving their kids to watch whatever they want on youtube, and it's quite astonishing what garbage they watch. We pick and choose what shows and programs they're allowed to watch, again, mainly relying on shows we have already seen as children and which instill good values. Thankfully many of them can be found online. And modern incarnations of certain shows are treated as suspicious until proven innocent after what we're seeing them do.
Of course having peers of similar values is also very important, which is why school choice plays a big role, and public school is off the table (though I know not everyone can do the same, but it does not change the fact that it is a huge factor).
100% they get it because we talk about it all the time, however it doesnt mean they agree but I would say they understand. There is pushback as age increases and social pressure DOES increase as well, this is why we think the transition is key. Our 15 y old son just drew up a contract in order to get a smart phone with things like a list of apps he would install, acknowledgement that we "own" his device, agreement that it will not be in his room. We will try to strike a balance between trust and micromanging, hopefully closer to the trust side of the spectrum! We expect him to fail a few times and thats ok, its all part of learning to use it responsibly by the time he turns 18.
This is a much larger issue than just a phone. Awareness of the great damage that can be caused by social media of all forms is just the first step.
What made you pick the Lightphone over a cheap dumb phone. Looking at their product page, the only obvious difference that stood out was the e-ink display.
Great question, and perhaps there is something better out there now since the popularity is rising. We researched thoroughly 3 years ago and at that time they had the best mix of features that fit our needs. Many dumb phones still have cameras and access to games which are both a non starter for our kids. Lightphones have no direct access to internet, but have calendaring which syncs to google, music, podcasts, and turn by turn directions. They are also hard to type on which we view as a feature that makes your time texting "count". We believe the e-ink display reduces the "pull" of the screen to our kids eyeballs.
There is also an element of the design and uniqueness of a ligthphone that starts conversations when people see it. Our son actually brags about his lightphone to peers and other adults, it is not an embarrasment which we believe is an intagible benefit.
Covered wooden bridges last hundreds of years and they are very beautiful. Maintenance is required (as with everything) but life cycle cost is really good especially for shorter spans.
GlueLam hasn't existed long enough for the glue-lamination aspect to be understood for climate, the way solid timbers are. I wanted to believe composites of all kinds had better lifecycle but it turns out Nature has some tricks up its sleeve which we don't yet entirely emulate, when it comes to longevity.
Down in Tasmania there are thousands of tonnes of flooded forest woods, which are being dredged up 50 or 60 years down in the cold dark dam-water, and being turned into exquisite furniture and musical instruments. I'm told almost petrified Kauri Pine can be the same, other woods turn into something magical when left alone for a long time. Put GluLam to the same test, It's probably not happy outcome.
Agree! The wet dry cycle at some point seems almost certain it would cause delamination. I'm surprised those failed bridges aren't more protected, it does seems risky, it seems they should be kept out of direct weather. Also agree glulams dont have a 100+ year track record, but it's getting there. They solve so many other issues such as efficient utilization of low grade and sustainable wood...so count me a cautious but excited proponent.
Good story about the Kauri Pine, that looks like a pretty cool tree!
I highly recommend the documentary Dark Waters and more so Rob Bilot's well written book, Exposure. It might make the greatest skeptics a little less confident.
