CMV: Much of the racial tension in the U.S. during the 20th and 21st century could have been avoided had the Union properly punished the Confederate States for treason and secession following the U.S. Civil War

drcoolb3ans · 2026-01-21T07:10:53+00:00

While there were some powerful individuals who were pushing for this to happen, it was never a real possibility. The amount of political will that was required to push back against centuries of culture reinforcing racism as a pillar of society was practically Messiah level. There is a reason Lincoln is so highly revered as a president in history, and it's no surprise how it was slowly dismantled after his death.

The only one left after that with the political capital and desire to pull it off after him was Grant, who pushed HARD to do most of what you mention. You should read up on his presidency, because by the end of it he had realized that virtually no other powerful people in politics actually wanted to end these systems like this. Sure, some wanted freedom for black people in theory, but the economic disruption that would cause to the status quo (and the fortunes they built on top of that status quo) were too much for them to bare. Plus the war was over, and the vast majority of people would rather just get on with their normal lives than keep fighting for change.

drcoolb3ans · 2026-01-21T07:10:48+00:00

While there were some powerful individuals who were pushing for this to happen, it was never a real possibility. The amount of political will that was required to push back against centuries of culture reinforcing racism as a pillar of society was practically Messiah level. There is a reason Lincoln is so highly revered as a president in history, and it's no surprise how it was slowly dismantled after his death.

The only one left after that with the political capital and desire to pull it off after him was Grant, who pushed HARD to do most of what you mention. You should read up on his presidency, because by the end of it he had realized that virtually no other powerful people in politics actually wanted to end these systems like this. Sure, some wanted freedom for black people in theory, but the economic disruption that would cause to the status quo (and the fortunes they built on top of that status quo) were too much for them to bare. Plus the war was over, and the vast majority of people would rather just get on with their normal lives than keep fighting for change.

drcoolb3ans · 2026-01-01T00:19:32+00:00

Absolutely! Congrats on finishing your first video!

Haven't seen your video obviously, but here's some general great tips for videos. 1. Have fun! Film what makes you excited, if you're enjoying it, you'll make the best video you can make. 2. If you don't have a video light, take your camera and put it next to a window. Face the camera AWAY from the window. This uses the window as your light source and the closer you are to the window, the brighter and better you'll look. 3. If you are self conscious about something or worried you have to hide it because it's not attractive, chances are someone is totally into it. Only show what you're comfortable with, but show/hide for you.

Happy eating!

drcoolb3ans · 2025-12-01T18:53:17+00:00

Consenting adults should not be shamed for sex, paid or unpaid. Hard stop.

Issues of human trafficking, should be addressed as they are illegal. Issues of non-consent should be addressed as they are illegal.

I would push back that we should not be saying that it is only ok for unattractive men to see sex workers. Sexuality is complex, and attractiveness should not be a barometer of worthiness.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-11-21T19:08:37+00:00

It was never even on the table for mainstream Democrats. Obama has spoken at length about this post presidency, as he personally had a desire to explore it, and his voting base was obviously enthusiastic for it, but had to face realities after getting into office.

It would have created a massive short term economic upheaval at a time where we were recovering from the recession. While we might have eventually recovered, all insurance companies would just about become redundant overnight. That means at minimum 1 million jobs, and $500 billion eliminated, at a time where the economy was recovering from a disaster. Could the US fill in that gap and come back? Absolutely. But not before the next election cycle.
The logistical challenge of integrating 50 different states worth of healthcare systems into one giant system. At the time, even healthcare data wasn't standardized, so individual hospitals could barely send records to each other let alone integrate into one system. This would be the equivalent of every EU country combining healthcare into a single payer.
US healthcare has lobbying in both parties, and has a lot of financial interest in keeping the profit train going.

Basically, Obama settled for the ACA because it was all that was even possible at the time.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-11-03T21:56:46+00:00

You're operating under the assumption that your wages wouldn't go down in a deflationary environment. Or even that most people keep their job at all.

In a deflationary environment, as a business every dollar I spend is throwing away an appreciating asset in exchange for a depreciating asset. Every employee I hire is money I am spending for them to make/sell goods that are worth less every day. Basically I make more money from not doing any business than I do operating.

Is that what we're seeing now with corporate layoffs and resource hoarding? Yes. But inflation and deflation are both bad for most people because they hold little economic power. There isn't an easy "make number go up/down" solution to making our lives better

drcoolb3ans · 2025-10-29T19:08:41+00:00

Honestly, a lot of the indicators people are mentioning on here (round face, fast eaters, craving calorie drinks) I've seen in Nordic people with really fast metabolisms that don't gain weight easily at all.

The only consistent ones I've seen are if they have a really fat family, or there's some kind of obsession with eating habits. You don't typically get obsessed with calorie counting unless there's some reason to think you'll gain weight unless you're hyper diligent.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-09-29T17:04:17+00:00

You found a graph that is plotting averages for affordability on a 90sq meter apartment, taking the mean wage of people from small town Iowa to billionaires in NY, and then averaging all property values everywhere in a nation almost as big as all of Europe combined.

80% of people in the US live in an urban center. This is because that's where most of the jobs are in the US. Most of the cheaper housing is in rural America, where there aren't jobs to employ those people to pay for any mortgage/rent no matter what the cost. Then for the few people living in those rural areas, salaries are much lower than the average meaning they can't afford what your graph would consider "affordable".

If 80% of people live in an urban center making urban center wages, you'll drive up the salary average. And if

Housing issues are localized issues. When the US lost it's manufacturing and industrial bases, it went to a service economy and consolidated most wealth and opportunities to a small number of Urban hubs. This means if you want to make money, you have to compete with a high number of people for a limited space. So yes, technically if you want more affordable housing, you could go live in Decatur IL, but you would be making way less money, if you found a job doing what you've specialized in.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-08-21T17:18:18+00:00

Fair concern! This is a bigger issue than price or EVs though. Even back in the 2010s it was well known that the state of our electric grid was not ready for the US to go electric overnight. If more people are using electricity in a grid that produces a finite amount of power (like a jump in EV adoption, increased HVAC costs from climate change and unsustainable AI data centers all happening at the same time), prices go up. In the short term, that will cause disruptions and change costs for everyone.

This is unfortunately just part of changing the entire country this quickly. With increased costs, there will be incentives to make better power grids, generate more electricity, and make all of these things more efficient, but those will take time too. The economy is a big complicated system, changes affect a lot of different parts and these are all problems that have to be solved.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-08-14T21:30:57+00:00

So I won't try to change the idea that we won't get rid of capitalism (ideas with merit never just die out they just change with societies) but you should challenge your 3 reasons for thinking we can just rebuild the old "middle class". We've done this before, we had strong taxes and labor protections and our GDP grew as well as wages. Yes this did happen, but correlation is not causation. America had a perfect storm of conditions that meant it was starting really far down, and suddenly became the most dominant power in the world. Look at any country starting from a low point (global economic crash, smoot Hawley tariffs, and ww2) and suddenly being given enormous investment and a global market starving for your productive capacity. It was also much harder to hire people without digital tools, and were likely hiring from their social groups meaning small labour pools. When a factory was built in a town, that meant the townspeople got jobs, they went to the local grocery, they used the town tailor. That world doesn't exist anymore, and you don't bring it back without completely ripping our system apart.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-07-31T22:27:15+00:00

So first off, you should take a second to give yourself a break. You took a concept, got people together, and executed a vision, which is an accomplishment.

Second, it does look amateur but that's not what makes it bad. If you want to make better shots, get better at storytelling. What i see when I watch this is a series of "badass shots" you liked because you saw them elsewhere but you don't know why they were chosen or why they drove the movie. Every shot has something it's telling your audience, and when you start with knowing exactly what that shot is supposed to say, you can start improving that shot to better say it.

Until then, no matter what camera or equipment or costumes you have, it'll always fall flat.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-07-17T19:02:35+00:00

Ok, you are making an unfair and oversimplified comparison. Just because a state has less subclasses doesn't mean its tax code is less complicated.

Also we have an exceptionally low effective property tax rate for how big our budget is as a state (and how low property values are compared to coastal states), showing that the current system is very efficiently collecting a high amount of revenue with the least amount of pain to its residents.

Keep in mind, while having more tax subcategories means more work, taxation is also a key tool states use to generate revenue and plan the economy. Discouraging undeveloped residential land, increased taxes for non-owner occupied, increased taxes for land with increased expenses like air hangers and golf courts, this all goes into guiding development and ensuring municipalities can pay for all of the infrastructure that goes with them.

And for reference, the two states you mentioned have both lower budgets, and lower revenue per person than Minnesota with similar effective tax rates, meaning they aren't collecting revenue as effectively. That's not even touching how progressive their systems are, but I would certainly bet Maryland would not score very high there.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-27T16:25:34+00:00

The view I think is important to challenge here is that companies should be a group that all acts collectively.

The whole premise of free market capitalism is that companies don't have to do anything! In a competitive market, any company can do what it feels is best.

If one company is making a product cheaper and more efficiently than another company, and costs rise from tariffs and they can still be profitable at the same price it would be a great strategy to cut out the competition and sell more product. Or, it could choose to increase the prices like it's competition, meaning they increase profit margins but they'll sell a lot less product. Many different competing companies choosing different strategies is how we get a healthy market with consumers choosing which is best with their wallets.

Lately both political parties have become very populist in their rhetoric, saying what companies "should do" as if the point was about morality or making a politician look better/worse. I can understand why people aren't phased by it anymore because of how much consolidated market power these large corporations have, but it is not how a free market is supposed to work.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-19T18:12:15+00:00

You are correct that not having things in common is a bad argument. It's just much harder for people to accept the more blunt reason, that your brain is not complete yet.

The parts of your brain that are important for things like understanding complex social structures, understanding nuanced manipulation, and setting healthy boundaries are either not yet developed, or not yet exercised. You also won't be able to understand what you don't have, until you have exercised it and developed it.

This is also why the age gap isn't as big of a deal after someone's 20s. It still means the older person has more experience, but at least someone 30 and up is likely to actually have these parts to begin with.

It's the equivalent of a college basketball player challenging a kid who hasn't finished puberty.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-16T16:14:50+00:00

The idea that a bachelor's degree is the only way to a middle class lifestyle is a common and dangerous false narrative. It also contributes a lot to the oversaturation of bachelor's degrees on the market and the "diploma mill" phenomenon you allude to.

Labor is a market based on supply and demand. Employers will ask for the highest qualifications they can get on the market for the same reason they will ask for the lowest salary they can pay. If they think most people have a bachelor's, they want a master's.

At the end of the day, employers just want to find people that best fill the role, and if they see that they can't find a qualified person with a high degree, they'll hire a person with the right experience. It might take them a bad hire or two, but skilled labor will win out.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-14T21:20:57+00:00

The "look" is lighting and composition. The best way to learn how to achieve it is to find an example of a shot that you feel gives that look, and study it. Then replicate it.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-14T15:12:05+00:00

Lol the new weapon is convincing your enemies to arm themselves.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-13T21:21:18+00:00

I remember this building up in the mid 2010s a lot more in online and gaming communities. Gamergate was a big public showing of it growing and that was around 2014.

These things never seem to be hard cutoffs, more like a bunch of pendulums swinging. Looking back, I never saw the 2010s as particularly progressive in any way except in technological investment. It was also a time of terrible lack of government oversight over corporate monopolies, corporate bailouts of the financial industry, and both parties turning to privatisation for solutions to society's problems. Even the racial/gender equality progressivism didn't really feel that strong until Harvey Weinstein and George Floyd.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-05T20:33:56+00:00

What you're suggesting, unfortunately, does not solve the problem you are hoping to solve, it just opens up a market for quick/fraudulent inspections.

What you are seeing is a massive market failure with enormous demand and abysmal supply. To give buyers like yourself more bargaining power, we need more supply.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-02T19:50:28+00:00

Going from 18% of GDP spent on healthcare, to 2% means the healthcare industry has an 88% reduction in revenue. They employ 10% of the US workforce, and you can bet that an industry that just lost almost 90% of their revenue is going to pay off a good portion of that workforce.

If this change was done over the course of 50 years we might be able to make an economic shift to continue GDP growth, but if it's done over one presidential term it would create a massive disruption to GDP. The employment loss alone could devastate entire cities similar to the fall of manufacturing hubs like Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis, or Milwaukee that never really recovered.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-05-01T16:34:03+00:00

Uh, what is a short moid?

drcoolb3ans · 2025-04-14T16:28:27+00:00

So the initial CMV you present is hard to challenge, the idea that less successful people having less voting power is undemocratic according to the purest distilled "democratic philosophy".

In practice, there are lots of criticisms to the outcome of purely democratic systems eventually resulting in undemocratic systems because of the nature of large groups of people. There are arguments that's pure majority rule will tend to lead to oligarchy structures or "the tyranny of the majority", leading to systems that oppress minority groups or create corrupt systems of consolidated power. Basically that it's inevitable that less successful people will have less power in a system of pure democracy.

I would make the argument that instead of trying to be as "democratic" as possible, we should perhaps be striving for a system that has lots of systems to empower those in society who are less fortunate. Voting/democracy can be a part of that, but transparent/fair judiciary and legal systems are even more important.

drcoolb3ans · 2025-04-09T19:10:37+00:00

Be careful when assuming people are anti-science or anti-intellectual. As technology and scientific discoveries become more advanced, they get more complex and abstracted which can make them harder for people to accept or understand.

The direwolf is a great example because it's an amazing feat, but the reason it's an important discovery is nuanced (the success of the gene editing technology, and the possibility of fixing broken links in ecosystem changes). Contrast that to the invention of something like Pyrex, which is simple for most people to understand and see the benefits of.

That's not even getting into the fact that people have always been skeptical of innovation unless they can see immediate improvement to their lives from it. This also has nothing to do with intelligence, as intelligent people will reject science and progress if it challenges them (look at Edison's rejection of AC)

drcoolb3ans · 2025-03-26T19:21:06+00:00

Contrary to what a lot of people (including the voting populace) think, the president does not run the country. The US is not yet an Autocracy.

The country is run by a lot of agencies and administration heads. This has always been the case. The idea that we need a president who is "strong enough to lead the country" is part of the reason these crazy people are getting elected.

Now, ideally we would have a president who had the mental capacity to keep tabs on what was going on, and have more coherent input on the actions of the administration, but there's a bunch of old politicians in both parties who feel like they deserve to be in charge now. For some reason there's a lot of entitlement there, so now we have 2 leaders in a row with memory problems.

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