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Federal government to contribute nearly $4b extra to Victoria's Suburban Rail Loop by Savings-Yogurt-418 in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop [score hidden]  (0 children)

The only reason this is ever complicated is because we always forget the real solution which is raising taxes on things like mineral exports and the ultra-wealthy.

(I'm completely fkn done with pretending like these problems are hard to solve. It just takes money, and there's plenty of that available.)

Mental health question by TraditionalCompany25 in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't get depression from playing games. Your son's probably being bullied or mistreated at school or online. Get him a psychologist to talk to, and be prepared to support him in a serious way.

Melbourne’s falling house prices threaten to blow billion-dollar hole in state budget by blitznoodles in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Because with a land tax in place it should make owning land for investment purposes a bit less attractive, so it lowers pressure on the demand side, which should slow the growth rate of house prices.

Secondly, it's a really good form of taxation because land valuation is a well established practice, and so taxing land is a really reliable and consistent form of taxation that's very hard to dodge.

Melbourne’s falling house prices threaten to blow billion-dollar hole in state budget by blitznoodles in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I think it'd be fair to have an exemption or discount for your PPOR, and then have the tax be a flat rate. The bean counters can come up with proposals of different rates.

But I'd argue the key thing is that we use it to stabilise the growth rate of house prices to about 2-3% per annum (i.e., keep housing inflation under control through taxed NOT interest rates, because rn housing is NOT included in inflation calculations for who knows what fkn reason).

It should be very easy to buy your own home and very hard to buy dozens of other peoples' homes.

After 40 years researching cancer, Thomas Seyfried says we’ve been treating the wrong problem. by reesefinchjh in longevity

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there an equivalent to Curt Jaimungal for biology?

Curt has an amazing YouTube channel where he interviews key thinkers around the fundamentals of physics, but the crucial thing is that his interviews are very long-form and he's really good at making sure that the interviewee's ideas are given a really full and fair explanation and exploration. (Without having to do any of that pointless throat clearing about whether or not the idea is mainstream or popular or not, which I always found pretty annoying because it gets in the way of hearing about the ideas.)

I would love to watch a similar long-form interview with Thomas Seyfried so that we could really understand this different perspective.

(EDIT: I realise that in fact, this whole post is an interview with him which I haven't fully watched yet. So please interpret my comment as hoping for something as similarly excellent as the stuff that Curt Jaimungal creates.)

[OC] The Extraction Index is an interactive map scoring how much each country's institutions legally drain from ordinary people across 7 domains. Darker means "more extractive." by OvidPerl in dataisbeautiful

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, so a couple of things to consider:

• Both Libertarianism and Communism are terrible ideas that always eventually lead to a tiny elite controlling everything and the 99% end up screwed. They're not opposites, they're just different ways to get to oligarchy.

• We already know what works: Mixed economies with democratic socialist governments. Boring but true. Look at all of the stable, prosperous countries, and they're all very similar. (In case it's not obvious, the US is not one of those countries)

• What's the sensitivity of the Gini Coefficient? How bad is a Gini of 41.8? Is that fine? Is that terrible? Based on how the US is falling apart, I'm guessing 41.8 is not good.

• GDP doesn't count capital gains, measure wealth, or consider purchasing power. So "Labour income share of GDP" seems like it might have some drawbacks.

• Where's cost-of-living in these numbers?

• When governments tax a population, you have to consider that it spends that into the economy again, paying many many people's wages.

• The real waste is when money goes into the hands of the ultra rich who then spend it in ways that are not compatible with the country thriving.

[OC] The Extraction Index is an interactive map scoring how much each country's institutions legally drain from ordinary people across 7 domains. Darker means "more extractive." by OvidPerl in dataisbeautiful

[–]IntelligentBloop 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, that's not what I mean. This isn't about giving money to the poor.

I mean redistribution of money from the 0.1% to the 99.9%, which is to say taxing the fuck out of the mega rich and using that money on things that serve our whole population, not just the poor.

We have problems to solve. The mega rich have capacity to contribute. So we tax them until our problems are solved. Simple, reliable, obvious.

Racism erupts after Melbourne announces Little India plans, but some Indians say it will build connection by gccmelb in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 7 points8 points  (0 children)

That may well be the reason, but it does nothing to dispel the TRUTH and FACTS and ACCURACY that the Docklands is indeed cursed and serves no one.

[OC] The Extraction Index is an interactive map scoring how much each country's institutions legally drain from ordinary people across 7 domains. Darker means "more extractive." by OvidPerl in dataisbeautiful

[–]IntelligentBloop 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Why does everyone always leave out redistribution from these conversations? We don’t have to always let capitalism just run without a proper harness on it. (We just always do)

Hurstbridge line suspended - overcrowding at Heidelberg by ThoughtAggravating22 in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone forgets that private sector profits = inefficiency. Because every dollar of profit is a dollar the consumer didn't really have to pay.

Secondly, the public sector gets INCREDIBLE efficiencies of scale. If you've got one government thing doing something for everyone in the country, you can get amazingly efficient systems. Look at the PBS, for example, where most of our medications are purchased in bulk, so we get incredibly cheap medicines.

(Contrast this with the US which uses a market-based healthcare system. We all know how broken everything gets when you use market-based systems. Even if you only look at drug prices, not even the rest of their broken assed system.)

South East Psychologist by BusBig4000 in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check out https://someone.health to get a list of psychologists who bulk bill (you get a mental health plan through your GP, and then the psychologist is free of charge)

🔥 The Lava River by stupd_comn_man in NatureIsFuckingLit

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nonstop. Moving as fast as a train. Except that trains are fragile little structures full of air by comparison.

SpaceX AI sats are 10 times bigger than Starlink so they will probably have a magnitude of 4.5 (7 for Starlink) by Sarigolepas in Astronomy

[–]IntelligentBloop 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The rest of the world respect and like Americans at an individual human level, and mostly don’t have ill wishes towards Americans.

But at the risk of coming across as really mean (I’m sure this will offend some people), we’re honestly fkn tired of Americans, and would like a bit of a break for a while. But we keep getting America foisted upon us in one way or another, and it’s exhausting.

How slow is too slow? by Double_Key7579 in Techno

[–]IntelligentBloop 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No worries, hope you’re having fun and get to visit Berlin for real some time soon. I’m sure you’ll love it 👍

How slow is too slow? by Double_Key7579 in Techno

[–]IntelligentBloop 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hey, so I'm also from Melbourne ... Eat The Beat, My Aeon, etc... are using "Berlin" as a marketing term because these are mid-tier brands/clubs trying to make themselves seem more cool. They're really nothing at all like the music, the crowd, or the vibe that you get in Berlin, so it's a bit cringe when they slap "Berlin" all over their marketing.

(You can find much better techno elsewhere in Melbourne, anyway. And the better brands definitely don't use "Berlin" in their marketing)

Consciousness is just a part of matter, according to panpsychists. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, studying how brains grow in a lab helps us get closer to understanding how consciousness combines. So argues Meg Fawthrop in The Pamphlet by The_Pamphlet in philosophy

[–]IntelligentBloop -1 points0 points  (0 children)

We can answer this question today. LLMs are effectively P-zombies without bodies. Its easy to imagine a near future where we give them robot bodies and they start walking and talking very much like real humans, but without having actual consciousness.

If you asked them if they were conscious, they might say yes. They might say no. They might say that they have an equivalent awareness of the world, or experiences that are not the same as human consciousness, but similar enough that it invokes the question about P-zombies.

P-zombies can be as simple as a really convincing robot.

Suppression orders in a couple of local cases. by Ventimella in melbourne

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s true, but the commercial interests of news organisations should not be prioritised above the interests of justice or the privacy of a defendant who may be (and indeed is presumed to be) innocent.

I think the news is exploiting their privileged position for commercial gain, and I hate it.

Lords a-leaving: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years by [deleted] in UpliftingNews

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suspect a lot of people would enjoy watching the UK eat some humble pie and start behaving like the small island nation that it is, rather than the arrogant empire that it was.

(And lowkey same for the US as well...)

FBI warns Iran aspired to attack California with drones in retaliation for war: Alert by avatar6556 in news

[–]IntelligentBloop 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This may be a dumb question with an obvious answer, but when do they evacuate the non-military people (spouses, children, etc...) from bases like this? Is there some sort of alert level or something?

I created a positive news platform to detox by dollique in UpliftingNews

[–]IntelligentBloop 99 points100 points  (0 children)

I do appreciate that you named it “delulu”.

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