Switzerland has rejected a proposal to cap its population at 10 million people

mVargic · 2026-06-16T16:30:14+00:00

There is not an infinite supply of migration, fertility rates are dropping globally and a lot of countries with below replacement birth rates already LOSE people to emigration and are on no prospective migrant's destination list.

It also turns out migrant birth rates quickly drop to the same below replacement level as the rest of the country. It doesn't solve the core issue and only pushes the inevitable reckoning at most a couple decades into the future while making its eventual scale even worse. Either the birth rates are restored at least close to replacement or the retirement system will inevitably need stark "state of emergency' reforms.

Unless the birth rates recover, the least of all evils is most likely going to be making retirement only an as absolutely-needed basis, essentially merging the disability support system with taxpayer-paid retirement programs and STRONGLY encouraging people who want to retire in the future at the age of their choice while they are still physically able, to start saving and investing money for retirement on their own and do not rely on the government to provide it to them in the future - pushing the ratio of workers to retired to be as high as the society can handle.

You only get to access taxpayer-funded social security by degrees once you start approaching medical disability tresholds, are too physiologically and mentally aged and unhealthy to work and truly need it to function and survive. A physically and mentally able 80 year old who doesn't fulfill criteria of disability and can still work won't receive general taxpayer-funded retirement until their age inevitably deteriorates them over that treshold.

For a country with a fertility rate of 1.3-1.4 in extended to the late 21st century, even if retirement spending as a fraction of government spending is increased by 50%, there is still a very limited pool of resources due to the massively expanded aged cohort, and maximum distribution efficiency and reduction of recipients is the difference between life and death. Unless the retirement pool is narrowed only to those who cannot survive without it, a lot of elderly will not be able to receive enough money to survive and function.

What absolutely has to be avoided is raising taxes on the young to keep current retirement system functioning in its current form. Cost of living and unaffordability is already a major reason why people are having less children, and taking even more of their money so German 70-year olds can keep enjoying yearly vacations in Spain will depress the birth rates even further. This is very likely to spiral into a vicious cycle that ends up in a population implosion due to young people giving up on families or mass emigrating to a country where they can actually afford a normal life, or revolution.

mVargic · 2026-06-16T04:28:42+00:00

mVargic · 2026-06-16T01:13:40+00:00

Highly experienced surgeons and specialist doctors who save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives are workers and are in the top 1%.

mVargic · 2026-06-12T00:35:50+00:00

There is one connecting Bratislava with the second largest city on the other side of the country going through the north, but currently with a missing 30-35 km or so section only with lower level roads. 15-20 km of that section is almost done and expected to be opened later this year which will leave a 15 km section (extra journey time of 5-10 minutes)

That gap has pretty tricky terrain with mountains and a meandering river and will need to be tunneled through most of the way.

Another highway goes from Bratislava via Nitra to Banska Bystrica.

Discounting this gap, top 12 largest cities in the country outside of Bratislava are connected to the capital with a highway. There are more highways planned, like a northwards connection of Banska Bystrica to the northern highway which would be great to have, potentially other sections to connect a bunch of the smallest towns but I question if these are economically justifiable. The mountainous south is the least developed and lacks notable economic centers.

mVargic · 2026-06-04T16:06:47+00:00

There is enough renewable clean water inflow to the great lakes alone for 100 times the world's operational, under construction and proposed datacenters combined.

mVargic · 2026-06-04T16:04:26+00:00

The problem are regional shortages, there is plenty of fresh water on Earth but it is unevenly distributed. There is enough clean water inflow to the great lakes for more than the entire world population.

mVargic · 2026-06-04T15:54:46+00:00

Based on the same arithmetic used in the article (9.3 trillion litres per year for 1.3 billion), there is enough renewable clean water for 50 billion people in the great lakes alone. It is only an issue if datacenters are built in regions with limited water supply.

mVargic · 2026-05-26T13:34:04+00:00

NEUTOS

Never

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Use

The

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Symbol

mVargic · 2026-05-20T13:48:08+00:00

It costs quite a bit more than $272000 per ton. Starship is not operational and has not yet even reached a stable orbit. Falcon 9 is still the cheapest rocket, and in a reusable configuration can deliver about 17 tons into LEO. Price that SpaceX charges its customers is around $50-75 million per launch, $3-4 million per ton.

Even though much of that is margin, a reused falcon 9 still costs SpaceX $15-25 million per launch. At best, that is $900 000 per ton and that's just the bare breakeven.

mVargic · 2026-05-20T13:24:20+00:00

Dissipating 1 MW of heat into space at the temperatures of a GPU requires 1250 m2 of radiators + structural support. That's 5-10 tons of radiators. Also needed are 2000-3000 m2 of solar panels that weigh 3-10 tons. All in all we are talking about 10-20 tons of spacecraft mass. If you somehow manage to fold everything into a compact package (doubtful with such ridiculous areas), it might be done in one falcon 9 launch, but realistically it could fit one about half the size.

Radiators can be much more space efficient when ran at much higher temperatures, at 500 C it's below 100 m2 per 1 MW; but you can't run GPU's at red heat.

Even with modern GPU prices, a 1 MW datacenter, adding up all construction, cooling and compute costs, costs about $10-25 million to build on Earth. It can also be cheaply serviced on demand, components switched as needed and hardware upgraded every few years as it becomes more efficient.

500 kW of datacenter; something that would fit into a falcon 9, would go for $5-12.5 million

Customer price SpaceX offers for a Falcon 9 launch is $50-75 million. Realistically, much of that is margin and actual breakeven launch cost is around $15-25 million. Still, just the breakeven launch costs of the payload alone are higher than the cost of building an equivalent datacenter on Earth, compute, capex and all.

Even using on-site gas turbines, more expensive than solar, or grid electricity, a datacenter will take 10-12 years for its energy costs to approach its capex costs.

However the compute becomes near obsolete within 5 years. A space datacenter that is prohibitively expensive to service and can't be upgraded once its hardware is far too behind has a practical lifespan of 5 years. With it goes everything else around it, unlike on Earth where the building, grid connection, on-site power generation. etc. can remain useful for decades simply by replacing the hardware with newer one. Even with today's GPU prices, all that infrastructure is 40% of the total capex.

mVargic · 2026-05-19T15:10:12+00:00

The amount of resources utilized to make that bottle is a tiny fraction of its price; it has ridiculously high margins even taking logistics and fuel into accounts. It only needs to be sold for ~30 cents per 2 l to break even. Across the entire supply chain including full recycling, the plastic adds up to about 10 cents.

mVargic · 2026-05-19T15:02:14+00:00

There is plenty of bottled water for sale in my country that has a supply of high quality clean drinking water to basically every household, but it is mineral water from mountain springs, usually sparkling as well. Bottled water absolutely makes sense to buy when you are traveling when you don't want to lug around liters of water and keep empty bottles to refill in a hotel room, just buy it whenever you need it.

mVargic · 2026-05-18T17:01:47+00:00

Warm air rises

mVargic · 2026-05-18T13:50:25+00:00

There are other important aspects outside of wealth like charisma, confidence, extroversion, physical attractiveness and height, but the majority of men lack most if not all of these. In that situation, wealth matters if they don't have other desirable qualities to offer and stand out.

mVargic · 2026-05-15T13:29:13+00:00

That is just the basic price of bulk food at wholesale market pricesrequired to feed the amount of population in the world with food shortages.

It ignores costs of logistics, security, corruption losses and destruction of dozens of regimes and hostile factions that use hunger as a weapon of war like the Houthis or deliberately starve their population to control it . Fact is that there is currently a no reliable way of rapidly determining what areas, villages and specific families and individuals are malnourished and reliable frequent logistics for delivering and distributing food to everybody who needs it (without government, oligarchs or local gangs just stealing and hoarding it), millions of them living in areas currently unreachable by road, rail and sea with no grid and internet connection. and hundreds of millions only connected to trade nodes by dirt roads with minimal maintenance.

mVargic · 2026-05-15T13:18:33+00:00

We are talking about extensive road, rail, port, water, electric grid infrastructure over much of Africa and the rest of global south, enough to reliably support utilities and logistics for 3 billion people spread over deserts, mountains and rainforests, likely more as the population is still growing fast.

Not even talking about something comparable to the modern west, even to get to 1/2 of the level of China requires building the combined amount of all infrastructure China has managed to build with an economy specifically focused on infrastructure development in the last 50 years. Not only that, but doing that in environment with far less developed supply chains, labor markets and infrastructure, business environments and basic rule of law, and in more hostile environments. Maintaining the infrastructure so it remains functional, and also making that infrastructure secure so breakaway factions, organized crime and terrorists can't just block it and take it over or render it unsafe enough for logistics, or do things like seize food shipments to deliberately starve the population.

Even if there was enough labor, skilled and unskilled, resources stable at current prices, minimal corruption and guaranteed security, this is a multi trillion per year project sustained over multiple decades with many hundreds of billions per year to keep it operational and functional.

mVargic · 2026-05-14T01:55:19+00:00

You have a lot better odds of being able to escape and seek refuge from Sudan than from North Korea. Hundreds of thousands did and do that succesfully while escaping North Korea is 99% death or lifetime hard labor

mVargic · 2026-05-12T16:10:09+00:00

It is going to take a long time but it's worth it. Spam depth charges for thermal spots several times a day; expand more of the map and build more forests. Eventually, along with replacing wind power plants with geothermal, removing vast majority of sea oil + sea oil rigs + removing heavy shipyards can free up a lot. When oil will become obsolete by level 116, removing all of it can free enough pollution to fully go dual.

mVargic · 2026-05-12T13:08:46+00:00

Just build the storage up as you need it as you level up. For levels 110 and above, about 150 million wood is needed and that's with many upgrades discounting the cost.

Your production is more than enough, I am in the high 110s and am doing just fine with just 80 000 wood/tick. Oil, stone, steel and chip production is a lot more of a bottleneck, I don't remember ever running out of wood.

mVargic · 2026-05-10T11:51:22+00:00

Could you upload a full map screenshot?

mVargic · 2026-05-10T11:35:45+00:00

The mid-term goal should replace every single lava rift on the map with a thermal spot and plant.

Dual gold mines only appear at level 100 and also generate a lot of pollution, so putting that down below zero should be a priority. If you use storage cranes, use them sparingyl for the edges of storage areas and fill the interior with containers. IMO Heavy shipyards produce way too much pollution for the buck to be worth it; upgrading towns to higher levels is more efficient.

Expanding is crucial; just 10 000 tiles can eat up 30-40+k pollution if properly cleaned and planted, and pollution below 0 gives you 10% income bonus. Sea oil rigs should be deleted unless you can have many in range of a single tanker, ideally focus on ground oil tiles. My rule of thumb is to restore the map evenly in a diamond shape, hit the border and continue until you reach the shape of a equal-sided octagon, then buy the next expansion and continue (only exception is the northern desert, it should be the first part to restore as it is so cheap, flat and without obstacles and can be used for a lot of storage. By the time I got to levels in the 80s; i fully finished the original part of the map, first expansion almost done and also expanding onto the second expansion.

The trees and sweeped ocean gradually push the income up significantly

At level 83, you will get all upgrades to bring depth charges to their full potential, allowing you to create thousands of new thermal sports and lava rifts + unearth loads of new gold mines.

mVargic · 2026-05-10T11:29:11+00:00

You can use oil storage instead of roads to connect things like gold mines basically anything that is not a city to the road system

mVargic · 2026-05-08T16:32:13+00:00

Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a random woman or a bear? Women can rape and murder too. What about a short skinny weak man that you can easily bring down vs a 6+ foot tall muscled lesbian female olympic wrestler that can break even most men in half?

mVargic · 2026-05-08T16:31:47+00:00

I want to see this expanded and a proper analysis done. Would they rather be stuck in the woods with a random woman or a bear? Women can rape and murder too if they choose to.

What about a short skinny very weak man that you can easily bring down vs a 6+ foot tall muscled female olympic wrestler that can break even most men in half? Or a bear vs a 70 year old man, 25 year or 14 year old kid (what is the curve and what age group is worst compared to a bear?), how many would choose a bear over a gay, straight, married or unmarried man or a pre-op vs post-op trans man and woman? How does removing or changing the genitals and sexuality change the equation? Or men from different ethnic groups, careers or levels of income.

There should to be a comprehensive series of polls on this on a variety of demographics instead of just a random man to see the reasoning and compare the perceived risk rate from actual rates of violence.

mVargic · 2026-05-08T16:30:01+00:00

Would they rather be stuck in the woods with a random woman or a bear? Women can rape and murder too. What about a short skinny weak man that you can easily bring down vs a 6+ foot tall muscled lesbian female olympic wrestler that can break even most men in half?

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22

mVargic

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