Vladz0r

Yeah this would suck @ss, honestly. Bernie needs closer to a majority of votes than a plurality of votes in order to possibly avoid a contested Democratic Convention. It'll be great if everyone's under 15% in California. Well, only 35% of the delegates pledged at the state level operate under this "full sweep" assumption, so, say, if Bernie gets 45% and everyone else is sub-15%, the state level delegates all side with Bernie. The others are district based, and would be pledged under that 45%. In a hypothetical example where a state is worth 100 delegates, I suppose the math would work like this: 0.45(65) + 1.00(35) = 64.25% of total delegates. Still a huge boost.

Statistically they have polled Pete Buttigieg voters to see what their 2nd choice is. It looks to be an even split between Bernie and Biden, tied at the top % breakdown, followed by the rest of the percent going to everyone else. Here were the stats from SurveyUSA / Political Polls 26% Biden 26% Sanders 15% Bloomberg 18% Warren 8% Klobucchar 3% Gabbard So, we may see close to this even split across the Super Tuesday states, or we could see a bit of a synergy effect where it boosts Bernie big in certain states or Biden big in other states. I mean I would think a lot of people default to Establishment candidates as more of these non-Bernie people drop out, but I'm not really sure. See, Bloomberg has also kind of hit a ceiling with the national polling, and Biden has no campaigns running in the Super Tuesday states. It's kind of a tossup. I'd be surprised if Biden won more than 4 states tomorrow, but not surprised if he wins exactly 4 states, since he's projected to get at least 2-3, if not 4. Bernie's polling in Cali could swing the entire thing, though.

Bruh they just confirmed 91 cases. We gonna dieeeee Well, I got plenty of body fat and multivitamins, so I guess I'll be fine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/28/coronavirus-cancel-travel/ That first video is pretty crazy stuff. I know crytpo has been being developed in the background for some years now. Not sure what the game plan is going to be. Not a full domestic travel ban in the US yet, but this info is definitely something to keep in mind. Really should just buy the survival gear I planned to buy, just in case something goes down. I think my family is in pretty safe industries for the next few years - school system, big bank, auto industry, so we'll see how we weather the potential storm. I'd some things to buy off of Amazon/wherever to do some survival repair, but I'm trying not to shill, and I haven't bought these yet. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017GQ7OEA/?coliid=I3BE7LAIK7R2TD&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BLTDD1V/?coliid=I296DP4J8DVKEP&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it (explosive proof gas) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZYSJ16W/?coliid=I1CQQ7RD1ZDAUU&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076DK947N/?coliid=IQGDNA5ROHZ27&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MNV8E0C/?coliid=I35DZKWBXLOB2P&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NPLSZF8/?coliid=I3I9R2YUJVQEGK&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000ES5Y1I/?coliid=I1QGNZCI9065US&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SL5F14M/?coliid=I24ZCJEA4TNP88&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SD4KMMN/?coliid=INQEYR4PK424A&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006H42TVG/?coliid=I1S7VUQ3HO9LK4&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0712252ZQ/?coliid=I186P4F7AIO7G2&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H1R7M45/?coliid=I297QHIZRNLTX7&colid=3AVMN07R30IC3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it https://www.amazon.com/Brita-Extra-UltraMax-Dispenser-Filter/dp/B015SY3VGM/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=brita&qid=1583161526&sr=8-6 Not sure if these are afiliate links, but that's most of my wishlist ideas. And then on top of that, make sure to have pots, cleaning equipment, lots of rice, beans, canned foods, boxed food, bulk granola bars. Focus on high calorie foods. I think that investing maybe $600-700 or so will prepare a small family to weather the storm for months at a time, if there are outages. The idea is you keep some portable chargers around for all of your device, get a small and big solar panel, keep lights and laptops charged. Ideally have a newer laptop that can last a whole day, use 4G off of your phone, have media downloaded, maybe get a low power consumption TV (LED TV 32" or so) because you can essentially use it all day with that electric generator thing. Maybe buy 2 of those honestly. Think about a way to rotate and clean clothes. Etc. etc. Not sure if this is helpful but it's a game plan I came up with a few months ago. I'm near a big city so I think there won't be a huge issue, but people in more rural areas or non-US countries should think about a potential global impact. Kind of random but I had like this huge sort of mental breakdown a year and a half ago ago after losing my job, and I was pseudo-hallucinating about the biblical plagues, the AI scare, a financial collapse, and a virus epidemic, among other things. I went in this hospital and I felt I was somehow being manipulated via some kind of feedback system based on what we were saying, and the TV content was giving me psychosymptomatic reactions. I had this idea that it was highly possible that all politics had been fabricated, and that the people on TV didn't actually even exist. I mean if you imagine something like Deepfakes having existed so long ago. For some reason I was having visceral nightmares about how ragdoll physics simulations could be created from humans. I also felt like every step I walked on my treadmill felt like my legs were going through a meat grinder. Certain commercials in the hospital were causing me physical pain to look at, specifically this Little Caesars ad. There was some weird thing with TV show framerates. I was also sleep deprived and while watching Leo videos, I noticed all this really jerky motion in the individual frames where Leo moved his mouth. I have no idea. I kinda wonder if there's any propheticness to any of that or it was just simply being stuck in a cycle of neuroticism.

I just want Berniecare and student loan forgiveness so I can start a business sooner. His plans would set up to be a few years ahead of schedule, honestly, with less time in the meat grinder and more time to do the basic stuff I want to do. If he can even improve the healthcare alone, that'd even save close to a year in money that gets wasted on this system, over the next 10 years for me. If he manages to fix the crisis that is the American school system, I could get back into that field for a bit.

Look, you're in a really solid spot. Downsize your expenses, watch videos on financial advise, stick to some safe investments and you could easily set yourself up for transitions into those type of careers in the future. I would see what it looks like to become a top end video editor or top end music composer, for example, and see how realistic of a goal that is. See what influenced you to get into those roles, what the economics look like, who are the big people that inspire you for those things, etc. I wouldn't abandon the hobbies you like, but prioritize one of them so you can maintain the skill as you do some career work. I'm in the same spot, I do some IT-related work, and have similar tech hobbies I'd like to work on, but I kind of squander my time outside of work and limit my hobbies so I can improve at a few. I guess I dreamed of starting a business at 25, but it's gonna look like maybe age 30 till I can at least take off multiple years, get fluent at some languages, obtain business skills to utilize it, do long-term moves to other countries, go around and meet people in my city, etc. I'm trying to just kind of stay up to date with miscellaneous practical self-development things until I can transition into spiritual things and figure out how to create a high consciousness business/co-op/organization. Priorities 1. Work, save money, retain sanity (This is #1 sheerly because of the time involved, and strictness I have with money) 2. Maintain decent relationships with friends and family 3. Stay informed with self-actualization concepts - kind of armchair philosophy, meditation and reflection. I kind of went through a long phase of self-reflection, so it's been hard to really make the type of gains without improving my economic situation first. 4. Work on language hobbies, creative hobbies and ideas, possibly software development in the future - hopefully will be part of my career goals assuming no extremes happen like a job crisis, financial collapse, extreme injury, or extreme wasteful spending spree. If your work is truly an awful grind like my old IT positions were, you should change locations a bit. Look into a big city or metropolitan area jobs where there's a good public transit system and lowish cost of living outside of the city. The work culture can be a big improvement in those areas. Also try and look for positions that transition into some things like Data, Analysis, or Management in the IT field so you can have a good title for future job transitions. I was doing some bare bones nitty gritty IT at a big company, but what I'm doing now is transitioning into a management/data analysis role at a very big company, and the work is often easy, and with better pay, so I'm kind of just getting the best of both worlds now from just a job change.

I'm defnitely gonna check out this series. I missed a lot of Leo's videos for a while, and I didn't want to get involved so much with societal things that I feel are out of my control, but I've been getting into the political stuff lately. It sounds like good stuff to listen to while at work, anyway. This might be one to take some notes on. I kind of want to comment on what you've said, but my response might sound ignorant. Not sure if I'm fresh enough on the prerequisite topics, so we'll see. Can you elaborate on this question?: "What is with people who work on their life purpose and invest all their life into it? They should be free to invest their time as they want it. Shouldn’t they be compensated for their work?" I feel like you're trying to say that people should be compensated for their self-development work, whether it is a business or just speaking to other people. If you're going in that direction, I kind of agree, but that could go along the lines of a citizen score type of system. Not sure how that would work out. Humanitarian Aid would include infrastructure things as well, as well as sending engineers and the like who can architect different ideas. These would likely need a lot of additional parties to protect both sides. On the term limit thing, that kind of has to do with the inherent biases of certain generations. I forget if it was Leo or someone else who said it, but for example, people who have their basic needs met can look higher up Maslow's hierarchy. i.e. people who are struggling for food and safety will be biased towards protecting those economic issues before tackling social issues. Look at Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya for example and his stance on gay rights. He says they're "of no importance " because there are bigger issues that take priority, and he says that that issue can be tackled in the future. As a left-leaning bisexual person, I find it actually admiral that he's prioritizing the economics of his people first, though I don't follow Kenyan politics too deeply. Of course, people can be progressive and change their views, but there's a heavy imprinting on most people and inability to do an unbiased and all-encompassing reflection of the current and previous generations, and continually evolve their understanding. Term limits are also not strict generational divides. This is what's allowing a slow but eventual replacement of current politicians and mayors and senators with people who are millenials now, for example. The fundamentalists of the previous generation serve a functional purpose of highlighting the good (and bad) of that generation. But again, this is without finishing Leo's series on this, so take it with a grain of salt.

It's over, the rest of the 10 plagues are imminent. Seriously though, those locusts are extremely creepy. I hope someone can step up with the UN aid. Fear not, though, we have ducks! https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/army-of-100000-chinese-ducks-on-standby-to-combat-locust-swarms/ar-BB10s7K0?li=BBnbfcL The UN is saying it could increase 400-fold, so this sounds legitimately alarming... Good thing the Chinese are helping. The UN is kind of notoriously incompetent. Hopefully it's an exaggeration and worst case scenario, anyway.

Bernie+Yang would be a better bet. Elizabeth Warren has outright ignores the prevalence of automation in job loss, and she'll do nothing to protect us from things like jobs getting automated out and outsourced, and will do nothing against AI and surveillance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI4xA7cdDac She's not incorrect about trade, but her lack of understanding and deflecting the question is quite troubling. People have to understand that much of the technology that we're using to automate out these jobs is sourced from US tech companies, not China. We're not seeing it in full force in every factor just yet, but it's happening on the backend as office jobs start to completely fade into irrelevance if there's no track for quick promotions and skillset acquisition. And Yang's response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbrDu8uWXCI

Lool "healthcare is a force onto the people" This guy must think he'll be paying 102% in taxes so that poor minorities can get their opioids and medical marijuana or something. Look, we live in a individualistic society. Capitalism has destroyed the idea of a neighborhood. Our school system has been stripped of its power to deliver discipline and have high standards for social studies and civil understanding. Our people have become cold and distant. And you're saying that by providing healthcare, one of the few instances where you can actually get help from practitioners who actually care enough to stay in that rough of a field, you're forcing it onto the people? I mean, what's the solution? People go to hospitals because of falls, injury, and pain. Did you ever think about how healthcare actually functions for people with disabilities? My aunt is disabled and her son is able to take care of her full-time thanks to the healthcare system. She's on medicare (government). My grandpop is disabled and soon they're going to be improving our electrical appliances for ease of use, through federal aid, and he may see some form of home healthcare in the future. My sister serves as a nurse in a local public hospital and takes care of a lot of minority people. If anything, a robust healthcare makes caring for our own people in our communities a viable win-win scenario. Currently it's a win for the people at the top, and a win for those at the middle who can afford healthcare. There are public clinics where people can go to get essential things like bloodwork, vaccines, TB testing, and even dental work done in my area. I had a fall and the private healthcare I had active tried to charge me to take me from my home to a hospital, and get transferred to another hospital. They had me doped out on drugs, mishandling me in the process, and causing another injury and the hospital transfer. They tried to charge me $80,000 during this few days of "healthcare" because my insurance was shit and they were trying to avoid paying the hospitals. I had to beg to 3rd party organizations to cover my cost, and they're still coming after me for thousands that are trying to be negotiated. So no, having healthcare is not oppression. Not in the slightest. Private insurance companies are oppression.

I mean, when you look at any means of production as a system, you can think of it like this? Should I have to plant my own food to survive? Should I have to build my own electronics? Should I have to pay for a new car if I get into a crash, or can we each get insurance, and the majority of people that don't get in accidents? Should I have to go and farm plants and grind them up to produce generic drugs? Should I have to build my own road? My own house? Can't I just structure my life in a way where I can do some work to provide some type of universal accumulated value, and others who specialize in other things can sell a portion of their accumulated value for a portion of the value I accumulate? Oooh, we can all use money for things! That's amazing. And look, if we just have hundreds of thousands of people each producing different sets of things, we can get the cost to be low! So that applies to healthcare as well. Look, Bernie is trying to set a standard and a precedent for the United States that as a resident, you have healthcare as a human right. If you come to the US, this will extend to you. This can continue to trickle down to capitalist societies that haven't streamlined this government payment model for healthcare. It's a service, but we're entitled to it at a fair cost. We pay into it, through our citizenship or through being a civil person who has a Visa or applied for US citizenship or is vacationing here. You have the right to use public transportation in Japan, at a cost. You could call it your birthright or rights of citizenship, and maybe it will make more sense to you that yes, we are entitled to some basic rights. We have rights to education, civil rights, we've abolished federal segregation of businesses and schools, etc. So, we have the right to have a system that's optimal for the impoverished. We may have to make some concessions. Initially, hospitals in certain areas may be full. Some people may abuse the use of prescription drugs, and certain regulations may have to be tightened. We may be short staffed, in need of more doctors, and hybrid roles may arise. We could see alternate tracks to become a "Doctor Lite" with 6-8 years instead. A lot can happen. I mean, at the current rate we're going, more people in Africa will have healthcare than US within the next decade or so.

This is hilarious. At 9:08 - that stuff that Josh is talking about is exactly the type of crap that Amazon does to its employees already.

Realistically I mean, hitting $900 million dollars is pretty incredible. I'm all for hierarchical structure (see Jordan Peterson), and yeah it's fine for CEOs and owners to make millions per year, especially when they're creating a lot of jobs and making big moves. A lot of these people though, as some people said here, are making money through how they utilize their assets, info they get on stocks, providing high interest loans or credit cards, etc. (See Amazon's credit card system). The money they own winds up compounding and slowly but surely exponentially increasing. I'm not sure about a wealth limit, and I'm not sure about going the way of Spain and making the CEO make only at max 8x their lowest paid employee's (rate?). That would mean that Jeff Bezos would only be making a few hundred thousand a year at most, which would make huge business expansions pretty much impossible without basically hiring a ton of people that team up and all agree on expansions. I guess that could work and still have hierarchical structure. I don't know where I'd cap it or if I'd cap it to begin with, but at some point it becomes lopsided when the people at the top own billions and the people at the bottom are making minimum wage with no benefits, which is a poverty wage, arguably below poverty depending on cost of living. I think if we moved towards systems that Bernie and Yang has proposed, where employees gain a stake in the company, and people can team up and vote for different types of expansions and quality of life things for the company, is a step in the right direction, and would make people become less of a cog in the machine. I'm at a big company and we're slowly but surely starting to get some autonomy, no stake in the company yet though.

Some some extreme examples of modern cities in India. This is a decent example of cleanliness and some modernness in India

I've known a bunch of Indian people here, born in India, who have been funny and lively. And then this one girl from Bangladesh who's completely deadpan, like she has the personality of a wet mop. No idea how her Indian-American husband manages with her. Anyway, India's a huge place and is becoming more and more globalized, so there's probably some cultural shift going on. I mean they have stuff like Hindi American Idol over there, so I'm sure it just varies on person, but I've never been to India. There's some bangin' food and really nice places over there though.

Yeah, I mean Bernie is already considered a moderate in every European country as far as his social policies go. This video is pretty relevant if you feel like watching. Basically it's on how Bernie is the moderate progressive that we're "settling for" over a hardcore transition to socialism, and everyone else is essentially right-wing.

Feels like I'm reading a self-post reading this thread. If your financial situation is good enough that you don't gain much from staying at home, leave as soon as you can. Build up an amicable relationship from afar. Read the book No More Mr. Nice Guy if you find yourself being pushed around and controlled by your mom. Moms specifically have a lot of neurotic behaviors and can be very controlling. There's like a dissonance between trying to raise a man and their utter discontent of all the men in their lives, and this doesn't go away once you grow up. I'm assuming that she doesn't have a healthy relationship with her husband, so that transfers to her relationship with her son. When you do inevitably leave, visit her occasionally, call, etc., because women like the novelty of this type of infrequent relationship. The least violent times with my mom are the short weekends when I'd come back from college. As soon as I moved back in, the "honeymoon" period quickly comes and ends within a week or so and she went back to her same old chaotic volcano self. This is just how toxic moms are. It's a reoccuring behavior that won't change. You can't hope undo 30-40+ years of habitual neuroticism if she can't even have a civil discussion with you about anything at all. You could buy her a house, a car, whatever she wants and she would quickly become accustomed to her newfound support. You can test this out with small scale purchases and items to see how quickly she loses appreciation for whatever you do to try and improve her daily life. I tried to get my mom more open minded over time, and really from all my efforts I think it maybe budged her to be maybe 2% more open-minded in the past few years. She's actually gotten tired of me even bringing up interesting and uplifting topics and would rather just watch reality TV all day. If I do ever need to get a point across, I have to use the same logical fallacies that boomers are accustomed to believe like appeal to authority, saying things like "lawyers and multimillionaires say this" in order to convince her of something that is plainly obvious to any competent person in my generation. My stepmom and my aunts are the same, arguably even more chaotic in ways. They come to hate and abuse men over time and have poor relationships with their children. It's these kinds of relationships that keeps my hesitant to commit to western women, or women in general. As a mostly straight male, I'd rather bang a trap or a dude honestly. I'd rather take higher suicidal tendencies over getting the full package of hell that's a woman like my mom. A lot of what I mentioned are documentary tendencies with neurotic women, but primarily for moms. I've talked with men who are arguably worse than my mom and just as neurotic and negative. Not going to say that Leo or anyone else will side with me on this, but you simply shouldn't let toxic people drag you down. If a large percentage of your free time is spent around toxic people, you will most likely inevitably get weighed down due to tendencies of the subconscious mind and what it focuses on. Still try and improve and become more conscious in all your social relationships, but it's like trying to teach a homeless person on the street about meditation and "letting it go" when he's in fight or flight mode 24/7. Moms basically go into this mode if you ever challenge them. tldr; save up and get the hell outta there

Maybe be like Andrew Yang? I think many people have an "appeal to authority" issue and either align with businessmen, people of power and influence, or politicians. Yang has a broad appeal as someone' who's deeply technical, experienced in systems thinking, has a heart for social good, and has experience in capitalism. I think he's someone who has really evolved as a human being over time. I think he would've worked out great if he was ever given the time of day. In a world where independents were viable, I think Yang would've had a very broad appeal. I listened to his book and I can see how it's an appeal to what democrats and republicans both want, leaning towards a heavily reformed Social Wellfare state that doesn't cripple and de-value people and their work ethic, while implementing better capitalism practices all-around. It seeks to optimize and reduce oversight, regulate and deregulate, and tax the ultra rich while also making it easier to start that dream company of yours and become rich yourself. It speaks volumes that Ben Shapiro and Bernie supporters both enjoy Yang's policies a lot. In terms of consciousness I'd put Yang in Stage Green. I'm a bit rusty on the stages. I can see that Yang's views on capitalism and his work in nonprofits are for more of a true win-win scenario. Yang also tells it is, has a tough skin despite his somewhat geeky background. He talks about regulations to how software is produced for the purpose of social media in a way that doesn't overstep into all small-scale endeavors. (ex. He talks about the effects of social media, p inging, the slotmachine effect on people's dopamine levels). It's fairly deep stuff coming from a presidential candidate, really. It sounds better than "AMAZON IS JUST BILLIONAIRES AND NOT PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE. WE NEED MORE MONEY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. WE NEED FREE COLLEGE. WE NEED FREE HEALTHCARE" which is true, anyway. I guess I just see Bernie as clickbait whenever he doesn't go into detail with his policies. I think Yang would be much better overall, more feasible, unite the parties, etc. I'd like someone to critique Yang if they've looked into his policy. I do think UBI can potentially be problematic without housing cost regulations, for example, so I kind of side with Bernie on certain issues. I also feel like UBI won't improve our infrastructure problems and we'll continue to be in the hands of capitalism, so I kind of prefer Bernie's pipe dream of adding 40 million infrastructure jobs. But hey, with Yang maybe we could just outsource it to the Chinese since they've legit been building Africa to have more competent infrastructure than the US.

The superdelegates are totally going to screw him, honestly. Last night's debate was sad. A total mockery of democracy. Trump has kept up his momentum so the DNC is looking to tank the party if they take down Bernie. Get prepared for the cold war. Better brush up on your Mandarin and Russian.

Yeah, the Amtrak thing is pretty ridiculous. I can't remember the video I saw, but their infrastructure is also quite poor and power cuts out often in the winter, and they have to literally stand there and scrape icicles off the underside of the subway-like area during the winter. Our transit system feels like a catch 22 with maintenance and high costs, while not serving the needs of enough people.

People have just lost their soul, man. I feel like at work a lot of the people are just like zombies most of the time. I used to try and be upbeat and talk and joke with everyone, but after a while I got tired of it. I made a ton of people laugh, but they've all kinda just dragged me down at this point so I keep to myself. I feel the same way with the humor thing - I either come off too strong or whatever sometimes.

He's probably looked into a brokered Democratic Convention, judging by the debate. I can see him maybe getting salty and returning to his republican roots and backing Trump or trying to keep making a push nationally to shoot for that brokered convention with bribed superdelegates. Bernie's uphill battle starts after Super Tuesday, I feel. Democratically he should win, and he'll have the most delegates throughout the primary season most likely, but this isn't really a democracy we're looking at when you throw in the DNC Convention and superdelegates. The media will try and pitch Sanders as a non-moderate or non-democrat or some dumb thing and overturn the loud majority of primary voters, and there will be backlash. Unfortunately, this is where the socialist label negatively affects him. In a perfect world, all citizens would be required to watch a bit of "real" news each few weeks to at least learn the policies and records of the candidates. Bernie's main flaws for democrats are the socialist label he used, and his past support over specific USSR and Venezuela policies that wound up not working well when coupled with authoritarianism and dictatorships. People conflate communism with authoritarianism, so this issue will continue.

There was a recent poll that had Bernie scoring like double the number of delegates or something come Super Tuesday, so it looks like those Bloomberg ads were just a collosal waste of money. 608 (40%) vs. 273 (18%) for Bernie vs. Bloomberg delegate counts by Super Tuesday from Nate Silver's recent poll. If the Establishment Democratic Party had been even somewhat content, they would've coerced Biden and Pete to dropout earlier, and/or started up Bloomberg's campaign earlier. Currently they've been splitting the moderate votes just enough that Sanders is able to clutch out every state more and more. It looks like Biden has lost his ground in even South Carolina, so we may see a 4-0 before Super Tuesday. Sanders and Biden poll pretty well with Black and Latino voters depending on age group, though it's slowly moving over from Biden to Bloomberg, while Pete has never gotten much support from these demographics to begin with. Bernie gets more of the 18-35 Black and Latinos while Biden/Bloomberg would get the older ages, of course. It's hard to gauge the data, but it looks like Bernie's pretty much got this thing locked up. I'm looking forward to the months of mudslinging that will occur, and I want to see if the DNC will continue to trash Bernie or actually support them in hopes of "uniting the party." All these big figures on TV, including the News and informal stuff like Whoopi Golberg on The View act like completely cuckolds beholden to the Establishment, who wouldn't know good policy if it hit them in the face. I think that Bernie has a big sleeper majority in the youth that will actually come out to vote in November. Us college-aged kids are lazy and don't want to go home to vote or mail in our votes. I remember in '16 it felt so uncertain that it seemed like we were losing steam with canvassing and on-campus support at my college, by the time our primary came. I think Bernie's plans are far from perfect, mostly because I don't see where the incentives are going to come from. I don't see how the taxes won't just trickle down to the middle class, I don't see how raising the minimum wage won't also negatively affect people looking for work in our increasingly automated country, and I don't see the point of emphasizing college as the "new high school" when our public school systems are literally collapsing. I'm still curious to see how an infrastructure investment is going to help young men and women in a society that has become increasingly physically weaker and reluctant to blue collar labor. Personally I think we need to work on these things first, as it'd be a bottom-up approach of getting more wealth into the pockets of people at the poverty line and middle class: School System complete reform - I made another post of it, but basically teach actual useful things in school, not just STEM. Utilize tech better, standardize good open source curriculums, etc. I love how companies like Google and Samsung are doing wonders for laptop use in the classroom. It's made an impact when schools can spend a mere few thousand USD to get a set of ~30 Chromebooks and a charging cart to share with a few grades. Bill Gates has expressed an interest in this as well, though I don't see him doing big changes to our school system which has been in gridlock for a long time. A national investment in public transit - long-term goals for electric vehicles with autopilot as standard. The goal of this should be to improve the public system, rather than to yield a high ongoing profit. Good US public transit systems like SEPTA don't shoot for huge profit margins, for example. Let's aim for something more along the lines of China than Japan in this aspect. Let's be real, we want to see that crispy Hyperloop, and go from New York to LA in a day by train, and anywhere in between. Housing price regulations - cost of living isn't in line with national or local minimum wages. Solar investments starting in areas where it can reduce the cost of electricity sooner. If you've seen Elon Musk's remarks about the potential to power the entire world with 100 gigafactories, and if you've seen the recent solar panel and battery tech, and things like Tesla's solar grid impact in Australia, I think you'd see why there's been a spike in optimism for solar since 2018 compared to even a few years prior. You can buy a 300W solar panel to generate about half of that, from China, for under $100. If you can figure out the installation aspect, it'd take a few hundred dollars to offset most of the electricity produced in a small to medium sized home or apartment. It's not really a pipe dream in the slightest to go solar at this point. People are estimating we'll need solar at a grid level and neighborhood level to get the electricity rolling. A nationalized homeless association - this is like a real longshot, because it can be incredibly hard to get people back into the system and get them a job. It took me a year with 50 interviews and thousands of applications to find a job making even $15/hr even with a computer science and teaching degree, so we'd need massive changes to get earned income into the hands of homeless people. I couldn't believe how screwed the school district is, and that I couldn't get any tech company to hire me without prior programming job experience. I still think there's potential for organizations that can feed the poor more optimally, but whatever. I've had friends and family who were homeless or at the poverty level, so this hits home to me. Student Loan refinancing for lower monthly payments - I think if we could maybe reduce the minimum loan repayment amount and lower the interest rates slightly, this could be good. Loans are a tough thing to fiddle with, though, as they can cause a lot of economic issues when things like interest rates are changed. Loan forgiveness would be great but again it's a longshot. I'd be happy to have my $45k of debt gone, but I'd also much rather people never get into my situation to begin with - but not necessarily by making public college tuition free. I'd rather people actually get more informed about the system and the jobs themselves. My younger friends who are very smart, valedictorians in their school, are still clueless about career aspects in college. It's just not part of our culture to do this type of long-term research and come up with solid plans and data for what jobs actually exist in our local area. Hence why everyone goes into Business, the arts, computer science, education, etc., and winds up leaving college, works at home, changes majors, gets into an unrelated field, etc. Welfare and Food Stamp Reform - update the law that forbids people owning a car of $4500 or more getting rid of their ability to get food stamps. Either raise this value or repeal this law completely. The idea is to keep people from spending money on "things they don't need" but for many people, getting reliable transportation costs this much. If you're traveling into the city from outside the city, you might be tossing $2k a year in public transit alone. I think that as more EVs with autopilot emerge, insurance prices should be regulated so that a car can becomes more of an asset than a liability. There's a lot of other things that can be changed, I just haven't reviewed enough aspects of the rules here. Telecom price regulations - Currently I'm very pleased my telecom prices in my area, but that's because there's strong competition between Comcast and Verizon. Internet is a necessity, and so is having mobile access to it. I think that there are good budget plans, but unfortunately I have seen too many people in poverty that still have a phone with Sprint or AT&T/Verizon, paying like $60-80/line. With ongoing infrastructure investments, I think Uncarriers (ex. Metro, Cricket, Google Fi) are providing great options, but these options disproportionally give savings to middle class people who know about them, because they don't have as many store locations and they require some research to learn about. It would be great if we could somehow get vital info like how to save on food, electricity, and other essentials out to the public, but currently our news system and government websites range from being subpar to being complete garbage. A real public news station for the people would be great. We currently don't have news that isn't funded by big companies like Bloomberg, Comcast, Verizon, etc. Local news stations in my area generally just show crime in my city all day. Healthcare reform - kind of obvious at this point. They've sucked us dry with healthcare and pharmacy costs for far too long. This will be a huge undertaking to reform. I'm glad I have no ailments that need medicine, but I know plenty of people paying up the wazoo for insulin, surgeries, insurance, and more. I like Yang's approach to this, and Bernie's looks promising as well. It's tough in a country that's already strapped for doctors, so hopefully technology and improvements for learning can produce more hybrid roles in hospitals that don't require 8-10 years of schooling, but can provide quality care and a wage that is fair to both current doctors and future healthcare practioners. I've had plenty of good and awful prorofessional doctors, so clearly this 10 year track system isn't going to work for expanding healthcare to every US citizen. It sucks that they have to memorize tons of crap for 10 years in school and take on monstrous debt to get paid handsomely, but currently it is a for-profit career, and statistically a lot of doctors feel that they aren't able to make the type of impact they want to make. Most of my hopes and are for improving the lives and costs of the necessities of the lower and middle class people. Minimum wage increase is a bit of a complex issue. Even within my city, a dollar in the northern part is like $0.30 downtown, a 20 minute train ride away. I think bringing down the cost of things and improving the infrastructure will have a bigger impact than increasing the minimum wage overnight and cauing millions of layoffs. If more and more people can accumulate capital, they'll have more financial and social freedoms and ultimately some real autonomy over their lives. If we get Trump, our fate will really be in the hands of capitalism and the few billionaire and millionaire philantrophists that eventually come back to save their beloved countries. It won't be a total loss. Your transit system will continue to suck for another decade. You'll start to wonder why you can ship items free from west coast to east coast, yet you pay so much to drive or bus to work. Your friends, family, and enderly will continue to stay stuck in their lower class state as social security benefits continues to deplete. Getting disability and healthcare will become more and more competitive to acquire. It'll still be just as hard to start your dream business since you won't have any healthcare to fall back on, despite capitalism being a supposed pro-business economy. Your utility prices will continue to soar as we move onto solar and privatization continues to provide "competitition" until more and more mergers inevitably happen. In fact, if you're middle class, you'll still see a lot of price drops in transportation costs due to autonomous vehicles. Maybe you'll even see a few dollars in tax cuts. Hey, maybe some things you buy on Amazon will get a few cents cheaper. Good to see that they're giving back. You'll continue to live in the paradise for the upper middle class and try and find ways to save and hopefully retire before your soul is completely sucked away through wage slavery. Personally I'll just save up and defect and contribute to another country with better civil liberties, where I ccan rest easy at night. We ought to improve our relationship with China and begin to see them as an ally again. To think we'll win a war with China is hilarious, as they keep investing more and more into African countries and their infrastructure, increasing their allies, and looking to reclaim their former countries. For a while our nuclear weapons basically didn't even work, but I guess we know our conventional weapons work since we keep testing them to bomb defenseless children in the Middle East.

Yeah, that's the consensus I've heard about Venezuela. I mean a lot of Latin America / South America in general is relatively poor overall. They seem to mostly just export food to us at low prices and not really have a strong global market economy. I always find it ridiculous when people bring up a socialist company that already didn't have much going for it before it was socialist, and compare it to the US (and only looking at the middle class). Well, I'm not sure how certain markets will work in a hybrid format, but things like solar power already get federal credits for example. I think partnerships might be a better way. Capitalism leads to innovation, government standardization can increase the total market and enforce a decent price. Maybe I'm being too idealistic, but look at the water desalination plants in San Jose as an example of a private + public partnership.

I started writing this in response to the Cuba socialism video but it quickly became off-topic, so I started a topic here. I really like a sort of hybrid approach to our country that Yang and Bernie have been proposing, more Yang in terms of fixing current systems and UBI, and Bernie in terms of infrastructure investments. Yang for example in his book talks about why Disability and Welfare fail as systems. Ben Shapiro talked about this as well in a talk with Black Lives Matter (can you believe I actually sat through this video?). For example, current food stamp laws don't promote obtaining capital by not letting people own a vehicle worth over $4500. The disability system keeps 99% of its people permanently locked into the system, because it gives enough for most people to never want to return to the workforce that they've left, usually due to capitalist practices and lack of labor unions, and had to fight for disability to even get it. You need a good lawyer to even get disability in the US nowadays, whereas it used to be easier. Shapiro doesn't really think the government is capable of creating jobs and infrastructure, and it squanders money, mostly because I think the US government has been very incompetent and illogical in its approach to poverty and crime. I think it's fair that he doesn't want the tax for people to go to a 4 year-college for useless degrees to trickle down to him as his wife is taking on hundreds of thousands in debt. Taxes on the rich, even on the stock market, can often trickle down to people at the bottom to maintain their CEO wages and profit margins. With the school system: I actually agree somewhat with Shapiro and Yang on this over Bernie's plan. Bernie emphasizes college too much, as college has become the standard, but obivously college degrees are pointless for a lot of degrees, waste a lot of time, cost a lot of debt, etc. It'd be great if it was free, but it's not. I would start with reforms to the school system first, as Shapiro mentions. Bernie also wants to triple funding to public education, which sounds wonderful. Well, if you look at what happened when they put $12 billion into Camden New Jersey. A lot of the money was squandered and led to marginal improvements. Ironically the charter school system that a lot of people dislike in the US wound up leading to them having access to a good school over there. Not a perfect solution, but better than nothing. Money alone won't solve the education crisis in the US. As a former teacher in a big city, I can tell you that the education system K-8 is primarily bullshit. Private, public, charter, whatever. I've visited and been at schools all over my city and seen what their standards are based on, primarily New York schools. The focus on STEM is highly misguided. We're trying to get 8th graders to learn Algebra but don't even have a robust system for them to master their times tables. Students never even learn how to memorize basic facts effectively. Most people you talk to do not know the effective methods of memorizing facts, learning a language, or mastering a skill. We have hardly any decent national curriculums in a system of for-profit curriculum selling. This means too many changing standards where teachers have to do too much planning, spend too much on books, and it just constrains the whole thing in the end over having open source options that are publicly funded and worked on in cooperations with Ivy League colleges, for example. This type of partnership would be very possible, in fact I've had a professor from Harvard that encouraged this type of reform. We also don't focus much on social studies in its entirety, meaning including things like economics, psychology, systems thinking, trade, politics, modern history (1900s especially) in favor of keeping the status quo. I've taught complex topics like spaced repetition for memory learning, self-actualization topics, talked about meditation, shown Ted talks, related classical artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Mozart to modern singers like Drake and Eminem, and had discussions with 8th graders before, in a low-income urban school. It's not a pipe dream to implement this type of stuff in the classroom, but teachers have national and state pressure for common core bullshit, PSSA testing, etc. You can call it a good indicator of college performance all you want, but college is already bloated when 1/3 to half your credits are often forced to go to nonessential classes. It's great for opening the mind up, but really we should be emphasizing that heavily starting with grades 5-12, and leave K-4 as more of the skill and drill fundamentals. We could have a subsidized private+public audiobook system for children to listen to books rather than being forced to purchase or borrow physical copies of them. If I could run the district, I'd flip a lot of things completely upside down. I also believe our teachers are competent enough to dabble in these topics, especially the English, Social Studies, and Science teachers. We need a bottom-up and top-down approach, I guess you could say, because it starts with fixing the system early and giving students things that are actually interesting and useful if we want them to find a job. With the impending job loss coming from automation, it's gonna be a complete shitshow for impoverisehd urban youth, honestly. We will never become Venezuela 2.0 even if we had 12 years of Bernie implementing everything he wants to do. We're too rich of a country for that to ever happen. We will also be doing huge deals for improving our infrastructure using foreign technology and a local workforce, and if you throw in housing cost regulations, you're looking at a 5-10 year investment to vastly improve our infrastructure. I'm talking like a national bus system through private companies with public funding, investment in the Hyperloop for cross-state travel, investments in solar and electric to reduce utility costs over time. I also disagree with some aspects of Green New Deal outright, including the banning of Nuclear Power. Until we actually have a sustainable means of providing and storing power, I think we need to keep it. Bill Gates has also said that there's potential for a huge improvement to the safety standards of nuclear power, to the point where it will become essentially foolproof and safe. I think for the amount of live power it generates 24/7, and the minimal waste it produces, it's good to keep during our transition period, and we'll see how it pans out in the future. There's a lot of other topics but I mostly wanted to talk about the school system, which I feel strongly about. It'd be great to return to teaching and get paid decently to teach a class that doesn't involve a whole day of teaching Math to 36 reluctant students in a hot or freezing cramped room. I can't even imagine having public schools as nice as in Scandinavia, China, the UK, or other modern country, but I'd like to believe something can be done. I know Trump and Bloomberg won't even try to do something to improve the system, because they don't fundamentally believe in good public education. They're more about nature over nurture, say "a good student with good parents will succeed anywhere" and whatnot. I can tell you this is false, looking at how students behave from year to year, from classroom to classroom, when their good teachers leave the classroom for a day, or permanently. So yeah, it'd be cool to see what you like or dislike about our current institutions, policies, president, and the potential 2020 candidates. I'm biased for Bernie because I've seen the impact of good policies as my friends over in Germany and Spain get their free college and public healthcare, have lower crime and better safety nets, despite maybe not having the same potential for massive career and business opportunities growth that we have in the US.