Why not? They have many things in common. For example make they both make you sick, often with similar symptoms.
If you're arguing that you shouldn't dismiss the danger of covid because of its flu like nature, then be my guest but asking not to make comparisons between things doesn't strike me as a very smart thing to do.
Covid can be dangerous and similar to the flu at the same time.
I completely agree, I merely meant to point out that making decisions based on the absolute pollution of something will lead you horribly astray.
That said a carbon tax certainly does limit shipping, as some of it will no longer be profitable. Fortunately when doing it with a carbon tax, it just so happens to be the shipping that we shouldn't have been doing in the first place!
no, it is absolutely the marginal numbers that matter.
All else equal, starting anywhere but the place with the most pollution per $ produced is a sub-optimal place to start.
In a world that has climate change under control, there's for sure going to be a reduction in pollution produced by global shipping, but in the world we live in there's much better places to start than by limiting global shipping.
That said, whether to spend your energy on global poverty or abolishing factory farming really comes down to how you highly you rank animal suffering.
Is a thousand chickens tortured from birth to slaughter, worse than someone dying from malaria? What about ten thousand?
It's not at all obvious to me how animal sentience compares to human sentience, but it's clear to me that we should at least give it some consideration.
Even when I give animals only a fraction of the concern I have for humans, it's clear to me that factory farming is an incredible source of unnecessary suffering.
I hope we can learn to be considerate of not only humans different from us but other species too.
If you remove the bay from the equation, the US starts looking much more like the rest of the world. I now live in Copenhagen Denmark but still maintain a decent network in the bay. The difference of culture is astounding.
More than anything else the bay created a culture of innovation and excellence that cannot be found anywhere in Europe. That it happened to be the bay area that became this hub and not eg. Copenhagen, while not a coincidence, is still somewhat arbitrary.
If the great minds of the bay collectively moved to Europe, I feel very certain they would be just as innovative in Copenhagen as they were in silicon valley. EU's most innovative and bright minds move elsewhere to be part of a culture where they feel at home. Until they decide to stay and help cultivate such a culture in Europe, there will be little innovation.
Trade agreements don't need to be symmetric to be beneficial for both parties. Even if China didn't buy a single American good, it is beneficial for US to sell to china.
Export is what you pay for import. If China sells goods to US they will get dollars in return. These dollars are worthless except for buying American goods.
Even if China can't buy American goods, they can buy some other country's goods using their newly acquired dollars. Eventually someone somewhere will use those dollars to buy American goods.
If India requires twitter murder a child every time someone tweets, I sure hope they don't just say: "Well, I guess that's just their way of life" and continue operating.
Obviously India is requiring no such thing, but what about when China wants google to build them a censored search engine?
Am I the only one who barely understands anything from that show?
Every episode I hear a dozen barely explained confusing terms with quantum this and higgs-field that.
I feel like they care more about impressing me with how complicated this stuff is than they do about actually teaching me much. Maybe I'm just not the target audience :(
This is the same argument often made against prediction markets. I remain unconvinced this is a significant issue, but I'm always open to changing my mind :)
I am somewhat torn on where to stand on this. On one hand I do see why we would want regulation against insider trading & pump and dumps, on the other hand I worry that regulation isn't preventing either, and society quickly would become inoculated if we legalized it.
When I read Robin Hanson's paper on insider trading and prediction markets, I became much more uncertain about whether we should regulate this area than I used to be.
How is that perverted? Shorting a stock is fundamentally no different than other types of debt.
Imagine an economy of 3 people, A, B and C.
A has $5.
B borrows $5 from A.
C borrows $5 from B.
A borrows $5 form C.
The economy started with $5 and $0 debt, the economy ends with $5 and $15 debt. Despite the fact that the society's total debt is now 300% the size of its economy, it is no different than how it started. Debt isn't inherently bad. Debt is a tool that allows us to collaborate.
why is shorting a company perverted? I would argue it's a great asset to society.
Eg. those who shorted stock because they expected covid-19 to cause a market dip, sent a giant signal to the entire world that covid was going to be a big problem.
Which does research into the most cost-effective ways to fight global poverty. Absolutely marvellous work.