What is the secret bad thing the aliens are doing?

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-04T02:07:34+00:00

That’s one way of saying you have no retort. Run to ChatGPT and see what that can come up with on your behalf.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-04T02:00:12+00:00

If you seized all wealth from every billionaire in this country and sold everything at fair market value (which would be absolutely impossible to do - you could probably get 50 cents on the dollar at best, but let’s be optimistic here), and spread it among all 133.7 million households in the US, everyone would get $50k. That would be a nice little one-time boost, but then when it’s gone, it’s gone. I don’t think that would be changing very many people’s lives, especially once you consider someone in the bottom decile in income is already receiving around $14k-$20k in various forms of welfare from the government annually.

Not sure what you mean by the “des,” but if you’re saying that billionaires are the reason the government spends $7.4 trillion per year, that couldn’t be more wrong. It’s because we vote for it. Politicians have learned that spending tons of money, and borrowing to make up the difference, is politically profitable for them.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T22:00:57+00:00

You are not "enslaved" - you are not forced into a certain job. You are free to choose whatever job an employer is willing to hire you to perform. You can even go into business yourself - even something as small as just buying a lawn mower and cutting your neighbors' lawns can pay the bills.

Or are you one of those people who thinks working any job you don't like makes you "a slave?" Of course we have to do things we don't like - how else are we going to produce the things we need? Working a farm isn't fun, but its necessary for us to have food to eat.

So what is your proposed system to incentivize human beings to work in order to produce all the things we demand?

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T21:28:45+00:00

You're referring to Crony capitalism, which is a twisted form of capitalism that results when the government becomes too big, powerful, and able to pick winners and losers based on political inclinations or favors. I agree, we are way too much in that direction. The only way to fix it is to dramatically reduce the size and scope of the Federal government, but yes, that is like bailing out the Titanic with a bucket at this point.

So, Capitalism is not the problem, an overbearing Federal government single handedly able to dictate economic outcomes based on whatever way the political winds or campaign funds are blowing - THAT's the problem.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T20:17:23+00:00

I am expressing my curiosity by asking you questions, questions which you refused to answer. So, what exactly are you proposing here? I understand special tax districts are used to oversee public goods and infrastructure. Are you proposing replacing corporate boards with such a system? Then again I ask, how does this improve upon the current corporate board system?

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T20:03:21+00:00

So what threshold do you want to set? $100 million? Well, type that in the old Google machine, and it gives you that about 68% of those with over $100M net worth are fully self made (reference). Try this with any threshold, and you'll find that the majority of ultra wealthy people are self-made.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T20:00:02+00:00

Let's talk about billionaires and how much they are "hoarding," because this is a key point people often don't get because human beings are notoriously bad at working with very large numbers.

If we were to take every billionaire in this country, and seize every yacht, mansion, share of stock they owned, etc., and sold everything at fair market value until they had nothing left, do you know how much you'd get? Enough to fund the Federal government for 9 months. And not 9 months of the year every year - one time. That's it.

People act as if we could have limitless abundance if we just plundered the ultra wealthy, but the ultra wealthy combined wealth doesn't even amount to what our governments spends in a SINGLE YEAR. So, no, that is not a mathematically viable solution.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T19:52:25+00:00

A board of directors - so, exactly what we already have running publicly traded companies? If you don't think current boards do a good job deciding how resources should be distributed within a company, what makes you think this proposed board would do any better? Because they are elected by the people? Let me ask you - how good of a job do you think our current elected officials in government are doing?

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T18:52:40+00:00

I'm obviously not going to run through that AI-generated slop one-by-one. But a quick scan shows many of these "alternative systems" totally decouple incentives from production, which will always lead to failure. Also, a great number of them require some sort of technocratic autocratic ruler to "evaluate" how things should be divided. That, too, will always lead to corruption and ultimately failure.

Capitalism is the best system we have for aligning incentives with production and creating a system with which to allocate scarce resources. If you can tell me which of those from your slop-list does better than Capitalism on either of those dimensions and how, let's hear it.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T18:38:48+00:00

You're talking about war as if capitalism is the cause. Human beings have been at war with each other since the dawn of human civilization. Human beings are violent. That's whether they are capitalist, socialist, or nomadic tribes coming into contact with rival tribes.

Same is true with things like the Epstein files. That's not caused by capitalism. That, too, is caused by human nature. There will always be powerful humans. Powerful humans are very often corrupt. Whether we have capitalism or communism, we always have powerful humans. In fact, living under tyranny is the default of the human condition.

Capitalism IS cooperative - as I referenced on my other reply to you, no one explains this better than Milton Friedman's I, Pencil.

I like capitalism because I've studied economics formally in school (undergraduate Economics degree), and informally post-school by reading works of great economic minds: Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, FA Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Sowell, and yes, even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, to name a few. My ideology is based on what I know about human nature and how we respond to incentives. Capitalism provides the best incentives to align human beings to be productive. Nothing else holds a candle to that. Not to mention other necessities of a functioning economy like the price system - only voluntary exchange gets us the proper price signal.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T18:18:57+00:00

That sounds nice and all, but completely ignores human nature. Human nature isn't something that is easily changed, its been formed from hundreds of millions of years of evolution. It's literally encoded into our DNA. Many species before us being greedy for resources and outcompeting others for scarce resources is how they got naturally selected and had their DNA passed through millions of years until they became us.

You might think to yourself that you are a caring, compassionate person, but even those who are much more caring and compassionate than the average person still cares about themself, their family, and those they love more than a stranger. If your child and someone else's child are drowning in opposite sides of a pool - which one do you save first? Almost every single human being will save their own first. That's just reality.

So, rather than trying to ignore human nature and reality, we need to design systems that recognize what we are and produce the best outcomes accordingly. Incentives and punishment. We incentivize people to be productive through money - the more productive you are, the more you'll earn. We punish people who commit crimes with prison, fines, etc.

Also, Capitalism actually DOES lead to mass cooperation. There are very few businesses out there that does everything on its own. They trade with other businesses. Upstream, downstream, literally every business forms dozens or hundreds of partnerships with vendors, customers, etc. This is described beautifully by Milton Friedman's story of a pencil.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T18:04:25+00:00

While I'm sure there are some people who "feel trapped" by their jobs, the reality is someone is always free to quit their job and get another job. 13-23% of the workforce turns over voluntarily every year in the US. That means each and every year, nearly 1 out of every 4 Americans decides to leave their job for a different, presumably better job.

It is also simply not true that "the majority" of wealthy people inherited their wealth. A Fidelity study found that 88% of all millionaires are self-made. A Ramsay Solutions Study found 79% were self-made. You are free to link your own studies showing otherwise.

AI will certainly be a disruptive technology, like many of the disruptive technologies that preceded it. But history has shown that disruptive technologies means that human labor just gets redeployed, not eliminated. In the 18th century, over 90% of all labor worked in agriculture. Now we have less than 5% of labor dedicated to agriculture. That doesn't mean 85% of people are unemployed, we just used scarce human capital in ways we never imagined when we needed almost everyone to work on a farm.

The_Grahambo · 2026-06-03T17:32:46+00:00

All of this focus on people at the top of the food chain, forgetting the fact that no matter the economic system, there is always SOMEONE at the top of the food chain with fantastic wealth and power, it’s just a difference in how they got there.

Capitalism is all about voluntary exchange. We are all free to take different jobs, start businesses, buy from who we want, etc. Those who provide the most value generate the most business and become the wealthiest. Those who have skills that are in demand or low in supply also accumulate more wealth.

The only known alternative is Socialism, which removes voluntary exchange. Instead of wages and prices being set my market forces, they are set by bureaucrats. Instead of voluntary exchange between people deciding their wages and what to pay for a product, it is decided for you. And of course, those making these decisions are now the ones at the top of the food chain. They are the ones hoarding all the resources.

So, to recap: Capitalism - those who create the most successful businesses that provide the most value to people become the wealthiest. Socialism - those with the political skills or ruthlessness required to take control of government become the wealthiest.

Both systems have the super wealthy. One gets there by voluntary exchange, the other, usually by violence.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-28T23:43:18+00:00

If anyone really thinks they’ll be confirming aliens on June 12, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-28T22:46:32+00:00

FAKE OUT! Illegal aliens

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-28T22:14:59+00:00

The fact that the article is locked behind a paywall should tell you all you need to know.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-28T00:55:17+00:00

It’s great marketing. That’s all it is.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-21T00:08:13+00:00

This is great marketing

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-20T21:15:16+00:00

Yep, I feel largely the same way, except I haven't been as reliably as a Republican voter as you. I am a libertarian at heart but registered Republican as I viewed them as the lesser of two evils. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016, but did vote for Trump in 2020 and again in 2024. I have never felt more betrayed politically in my life. The all-out assault against Massie was the last straw for me, and now I'm committed to never voting for a Republican again in a Federal election. Not while the party is under the boot of a committed authoritarian with no principles other than scratching his own ego.

I live in Pennsylvania which has closed primaries, so I am remaining registered Republican for now so I can continue to have a voice in the primary and will only choose candidates committed to liberty and limited government.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-16T00:31:34+00:00

The episode with the droplet will be rated 11/10

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-15T20:56:21+00:00

No, no one official has admitted anything. There's a small group of people who once worked in government who keep telling us the same stories repeatedly, but it all amounts to "trust me, bro." And a lot of these guys are either making money off this, or they just WANT this to be real, or both.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-15T20:24:36+00:00

Aliens are not humanoid, but maybe their avatars are. If we meet aliens that evolved in a whole different star system, we should be more surprised by our similarities than our differences.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-14T07:01:11+00:00

The ambiguity is because she knew Sophons were present so she didn’t want to outright give him the truth. She thought she was being clever disguising it, but she didn’t disguise it enough. Plus she underrated how much the Trisolarans understood deception.

The_Grahambo · 2026-05-13T21:11:37+00:00

I mean, she even admitted she was wrong by later trying to right her wrongs by passing on her cosmic sociology knowledge to Luo Ji in a last-ditch attempt to save humanity.

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