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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • People who were already poor would remain so. Most people who aren’t wealthy can’t afford to own acres of land that doesn’t produce crops. If leaves suddenly became money, that would not change the fundamental needs people have of food and shelter. So you’d have the wealthy with vast swathes of forest that would slowly die as they carted out a lot of compost for use in markets, and people who live in apartments or other rental situations would never see a leaf on the ground again. You might see suburban homeowners get really good about caring for their trees and planting more, so that’s one possible benefit but overall this would be a nightmare.




  • Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Glaciers formed over millennia. If they melt, they’re gone, even if we drop CO2 to pre-industrial levels. The Antarctic ice sheet is millions of years of snow that fell at the rate of a few inches a year and just didn’t melt. If significant portions of that fall off and melt, it’ll be millions of years more for the water it adds to the oceans to cycle back to the ice sheet again. The changes we have made will not be reversed automatically or in many cases at all.



  • Short answer: yes

    Longer answer: I would argue we’ve already had a few civil wars since the “War Between the States” in the 1860s. Reconstruction was arguably another civil war. The labor rights war of the early twentieth century included federal troops attacking organizing coal miners and federal agents along with private security forces attacking striking workers elsewhere. The violence of the civil rights movement (remember: the president had to call in the national guard to enforce integration) would also qualify as a civil war by some standards.

    Listen to the first limited series of the podcast It Could Happen Here for an idea of how a more involved civil war could start. The idea is that there would not be clear battle lines drawn up because our divide now is more urban vs rural, and people in rural areas have opportunities to attack infrastructure that would have significant impacts on urban areas.











  • They don’t want to carry inventory because Amazon doesn’t. The prices are higher because vendors are contractually obligated to sell on Amazon at their lowest price. So retailers, with a need to have a physical presence and having to buy at more or less the same price a product is available for on Amazon, get fucked. Their only hope is vendors who make a “different” product to sell at other outlets. An example of what I mean is, Poppi soda sells for $20/12 pack on Amazon. They sell a 15 pack at Costco for the same price. Because it’s a “different” product they are not in breach of contract.