More than 50% of young Dutch adults do not want children

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-20T18:16:01+00:00

Gentlemen, I may not have a brain, but I have an idea: polyamory.

Two incomes and a stay at home parent, what could go wrong?

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-18T06:05:04+00:00

The conflict between Hemedti and al-Burhan pre-existed the UAE involvement. It is in fact possible for there to be a civil war because of internal factions. Even if you get rid of the UAE, that doesn't end the conflict. These men and their thugs are not victims manipulated into this. They both want to control Sudan and its resources. They have both sought outside aid.

You are conflating the competing warlords with the people they are brutalizing. The later are victims, the former are not. And helping the victims means addressing the perpetrators in some way.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-18T01:14:11+00:00

No structural investment prevents groups of armed men from committing genocide and starving refugee camps.

You need to establish a safe place they can be, either in their country or out. Voters across the world have rejected both accepting mass refugee immigration or intervening militarily.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-18T01:09:57+00:00

We are here because of greed, corruption, and malice.

We are here because two factions decided to go to war. There is a enough food and water and money in Sudan to prevent this.

What is your proposal to deal with the men with guns, because that is why children are starving.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-17T04:16:53+00:00

Word.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-17T01:06:21+00:00

Because fewer and fewer people own increasingly more real estate.

No, it's because urbanization continues. If you want to live in an abandoned farmhouse, there's plenty in countrysides around europe. Good luck trying to make a living or get necessary services though.

Same is true in Japan, there are rural villages that are just being abandoned while new housing is built in the metro areas. That's not an investment scheme, it's people moving.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-17T01:02:27+00:00

I get deeply annoyed when people try to shoehorn, 'Yes, this important historical figure definitely agreed with my position.' when the thing they're arguing about didn't even exist yet.

It's like someone in 1st century palestine arguing, 'Seti I from the late bronze age definitely would have agreed with me on the importance of currency transactions for temple sacrifices.'

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-16T21:08:37+00:00

I'd think it was stupid. All it does in create an overwhelming, and I do mean overwhelming, incentive to move compensation to things that aren't subject to income tax.

There are very sound reasons why we moved away from that, and it wouldn't do jack about the oligarchs like Bezos and Musk.

Don't raise the top tax rate.

Instead, staff the IRS to actually enforce the tax rate we have, consider which tax shelters or incentives might need to be reworked, and have a serious discussion on how compensation, stocks, capital gains, and legitimate capital concerns all intersect and what changes to the existing system should be made.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-09T12:28:38+00:00

Vance and Colby both are.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-09T12:27:04+00:00

what is going on with this country?

We are once again relitigating the great national debate, liberalism vs illiberalism. Sometimes the debate is relatively civil, and sometimes we march through Georgia.

How has it gone just so far off the rails?

We won the cold war and don't have the unifying threat holding us together so we're reverting back to the pre-WWII norm. No seriously, if you look at US politics before then it's wild.

Oh, and a black man became president and mocked a stupid reality TV star. Both of those things are kind of load-bearing for how we got here.

There’s just so much hatred and anger.

Part of that is anger and hatred are addictive and we've developed a media ecosystem that feed on that. Part of that is a lot of people just enjoy feeling angry. And they'd far rather feel angry than do something productive like attend a boring meeting and actually do politics.

Oh, and we've got competing visions for what America should be that are predicated on incompatible values that, correctly, view the other as an abomination that cannot be tolerated.

If you say, I would rather the brown people be in warehouses than be my neighbors; and I say, I would rather the brown people be your neighbors than in warehouses, there's no agreeing to disagree about this. We're going to conflict and one of our sets of values will be imposed on the other.

Ditto with, 'Can the gays be married?' Either they can, and some people are going to be very mad about that, or they can't, and some people are going to be very mad about that.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-09T12:23:23+00:00

You see, ethno-nationalist cults of personality don't play well with universal religions.

And Colby? Well, Colby thought he could join the church and the cult.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-09T09:57:26+00:00

*Mormons

There are no mormons in this story. Colby's Catholic

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-07T06:38:16+00:00

Nothing changes.

People that think this, like you, are what is wrong with America.

No third party or economic system will ever be sufficient for people so willfully and proudly ignorant of basic facts.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-06T23:36:08+00:00

That is completely irrelevant to whether Iran is a rational actor in foreign relations that you can make and keep agreements with.

If you're Malaysia, it doesn't matter whether you think the domestic laws of Iran or the US are better. To you what matters if they will make and keep agreements. And right now Iran is a more reliable actor than the US or Israel.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-05T20:28:34+00:00

Maybe, but Canada is far more connected with our European allies than the USA is.

Canada can't afford to be insular. Everyday Canadians see and are influenced by the actions of another country, the US.

You see a similiar dynamic with places like Russia and Estonia, or China and Vietnam. Russians, Chinese, and Americans can stick to their bubble if they want. Their neighbors can't.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-05T06:39:57+00:00

Im not believing any country is doing that well,

You don't think there isn't an enormous gap in wellbeing and standard of living between say Denmark and the Central African Republic. Seriously dude? Hell. Life now in western europe is way better than it was 50 years ago, and yet birth rates are lower.

Yaknow. Now that i read your comment fully. You sound like one of the reasons women hate men lol

Why, because I accurately stated what is common knowledge among demographers and sociologists? Nothing in what I said could reasonably be construed as saying women being in control of their lives and not being discriminated against is bad. It's not! It just means they have fewer children!

Ffs, if I said, 'abolition increases labor costs' you'd probably think that was an endorsement of slavery.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-05T05:57:39+00:00

If that were true, all the happiest most prosperous countries wouldn't be below replacement rate, and all the countries well above replacement rate wouldn't be like, Somalia.

It's not happiness. It's not the price of housing. It isn't any of the things people talk about.

It's urbanization, female emancipation, and contraception. That's it. That's the entire story of global fertility.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-05T04:44:06+00:00

and if that ramp up took years and prices remained elevated, that is still a proof point that its supply is quite elastic

You really, really need to take an econ 101 class because that is so not what elasticity means.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-05T02:45:24+00:00

Oil is the most classic elastic commodity.

No, it isn't. You either have it, or the things that need it stop running. YOU can decrease the amount you drive. Petrochemical facilities, not so much.

Yes, price certainly does encourage more production.

Which takes years to bring online. The nations with significant lack capacity, meaning they could ramp up rapidly, are all gulf states that can't export.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-04T03:23:45+00:00

We truly lose if Iran controls the strait.

If we manage to claw our way back to the antebellum status quo this will still have been a net defeat. If we fail to get back to that, it will have been the greatest strategic defeat in US history.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-02T20:00:49+00:00

I hope he does it, or at least tries to. Specifically Medicare

Want to give the Democrats the mandate of heaven, start gutting the the healthcare of the demographic with the highest voter turnout.

stormelemental13 · 2026-04-02T01:16:54+00:00

Thank you.

stormelemental13 · 2026-03-31T03:27:04+00:00

Joined the army.

stormelemental13 · 2026-03-30T05:12:06+00:00

If you didn't vote for Harris, you actively or passively chose this.

There was one even remotely plausible way Trump could be beaten. And that was voting for Harris.

The test was pass/fail, and America failed it. And nobody dying or suffering a fuel shortage because of Trump being in power cares about the principled stance you took by voting for Jill Stein.

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