There is only so much personal agency a person can possess, before it becomes public insurgency.

If there is an overhaul, I think the focus should be on a revised economic system, where there are fixed incomes based on job type or status, alongside absolute caps on how much wealth can be held. Anything beyond the cap is 100% taxed.

UBI is used to guarantee shelter, utilities, transport, healthcare, and generic items. Money is used for buying fancy stuff, such as sheets with patterns or colors, bigger housing, and so forth. Fixed incomes start at $10,000 a year for citizens, students get a range of income based on grades that range from $10,000 to $20,000, while basic jobs like waiters get $40k a year. Astronauts get $100k, the absolute cap for annual income. Leaders get their position and pay rank voted by the workers of the company.

It is best if everyone had personal freedom, but they shouldn’t have absolute freedom over everybody else. I hope the arrangement I outlined gives enough flexibility that most folks would feel fulfilled.

Personally, I think the R&D times of planes and other mainstream gear takes so long, is because there isn’t genuine necessity. First and foremost, the MiC exists to enrich elite critters - actual defense of the nation is tertiary. The secondary is just to make fancy gear that looks neat for battle glamour, but lacks substance for warfare.

I suspect an actual peer-to-peer war between NATO and Dogey America would result in much faster development time. Also many failures, but necessity would force rethinking on how to produce weapons. I listen to many videos about plane development, and WW2 really stood out in how many fails there were, while the envelope constantly got pushed.

My prediction is that Europe would be much better than America when it comes to transitioning into a true war economy, because they have a less corrupted MiC to get in the way.

If America has a major revolution, I suspect many of the financial assets would turn out to be smoke and mirrors, rather than something of concrete value.

I was never wealthy enough to make the most of my youth. Consequently, I couldn’t leverage my youth to age happily.

It is with this premise that I began to formulate a concept of UBI, ranked income, and so forth. People simply can’t do stuff if they don’t have enough things to support a baseline existence. That baseline should be strong enough to offer education, health, freedom to wait for jobs that aren’t abusive, the ability to travel, and so on. Agency is the core to an effective human, and our capitalistic society is designed to confer that agency upon a few.

Good. Trump’s “helping” hand is covered in blood and shit.

If there are reforms, I think that one of them is access to lawyers. Rich or poor, you shouldn’t pay for lawyers. Instead, they are all placed into a common pool, where each side picks their representatives. If both sides happen to pick the same lawyers, they roll a dice in front of the court until someone has the higher number. That person gets the lawyer, and the other side draws someone else of choice from the pool.

I also think that lawyers should rotate in the role they may serve after every case. Prosecution -> Defense -> Prosecution -> Defense, for their entire career as courtroom representatives. If a lawyer refuses to represent, they are barred from serving as a lawyer for four months, and their refusal goes onto a common dossier that anyone can see.

This encourages the whole profession of lawyers to ensure that the courtroom is fair to both defense and prosecution, and that both roles are equally valid when it comes to reputation.

The US is much like the man at the top: talking to itself, incapable of understanding the world around it.

Considering what was already happening to Gaza and Palestine, plus the egging on of the USA into war against Iran, I think Israel was already fully galvanized to make war. Israel up to this point has suffered no consequences for their actions, so there wasn’t real pressure to change things. Plus, they were taking territory from others and were enriching their populations - which is pretty popularizing by default.

Iran, on the other hand, wasn’t gaining new territories to grease the palms of their citizens. That gave much stronger incentives for their population to be opposed to their leadership, up until they got bombed by “freedom”.

Different nations, different circumstances.

Good. Israel’s people won’t ever demand reforms, if they don’t suffer for the evils they have supported.

This is not how wars work. Considering the nature of ICE, it would be easy for Iran to embed operatives within America, and no one would be able to tell the difference.

The American-Iranian war will drag on for at least a decade, even if open combat was ended today.

Normally I would dismiss this as stupid propaganda. Now I am considering it to be an incredulous reality. 😒

Rules for Being an Evil Overlord, #22: “No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.”

In a follow up comic, the geeks ignore the lady, because they have waifus. No freebies.

I think that if the United States we know are replaced, we will need the new Constitution to enshrine UBI. Part of that should be free fuel, food, and lodgings. By providing such things, it will be much easier for people to protest. Right now, you have to risk losing everything if you dare wander off the corporate reservations.

No work? No agency. Have work? no agency.

We must work towards ensuring agency for every single person.

The odds of Trump trying to nuke someone is higher than 0%. My nation has contracted rabies. 😰

Short of offering Trump’s heads on a platter, I do not think Iran would consider any overture to be sincere. Or the world, for that matter.

I kinda suspect that debts to people and companies within the US would mostly get erased. Because at the end of the day, money is a fictional thing we invented to make it easier to conduct trade. Odds are that we would take away the real valuables from the former elites - their buildings, land, assets, and finding jobs for honest workers at places that don’t suck donkey.

We might be able to beg foreign nations to delay or restructure debts. Maybe. Depends on whether the diddler in chief presses the nuclear button.