Many people just think certain things in history were outlawed because of 'stupid religious people'. Most of the time there's genuine reasons for banning things even if they weren't perfect or brought other harms with them. Something like usury was banned in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and it wasn't because people prior to 1900 were imbeciles, these things can cause immense instability.
Are they the most egoistic generation ever? The ones who decided to go on this path weren't the boomers but the generation before (as with some other things boomers are blamed for). A capital backed social insurance system is a "ponzi" scheme in different ways from a PAYG system it's really not some holy grail. The problem is just demographics
I've known people working in federal government where firing them would be a serious problem, as in they're the only person who knows something quite important well enough.
Many of these people could get paid more in private industry. You're seriously underestimating niche knowledge of things and/or overestimating how well things are documented.
> they're the only person who knows something quite important well enough.
Then either the organization needs to abandon that 'something' or create a structure that prevents such a situation arising.
If that 'something' is important then the organization has to provide some sort of guarantee of continuity or it is permanently just one road traffic accident from disaster. If it won't do that then it is tacitly admitting that the 'something' is not important.
Thousands of employees isn't even that much for USDA. There's also good reason to have headquarters of organisations close to headquarters of other organisations. It just lowers efficiency (which they might be after)
Collecting watches isn't a hobby, it's pure consumerism. Sure many hobbies have (recently?) gotten way more people spending top dollars for no reason but with watch collecting there's nothing else. You're not tweaking the dials, you don't know how to make the watch, you just watch it and wear it while a technologically superior version is 500 times cheaper. There's also no natural shortage of them, they can make a trillion of these watches.
At least with cars or audio equipment there's some marginal benefits once you get to crazy numbers, not the case with watches.
What is wrong with watch consumerism? It isn't like it's ruining the planet and hurting anyone. Like you said, there is no shortage and nobody will die without them.
> You're not tweaking the dials, you don't know how to make the watch, you just watch it and wear it while a technologically superior version is 500 times cheaper
This describes precisely zero watch enthusiasts I know. Each of them can open up the watch and understand what's happening. In one case, he'll disassemble the major components to clean them. (Analogous to how riders can take care of their horses and gear, or I can tune and wax my skis.)
Your dismissal could be just as accurately be applied to the various programming languages many of us learn for fun. We don't know how to write its compiler. We can barely do anything useful in it. We just play with it while a technologically-superior version would take a fraction of the effort.
> There's also no natural shortage of them, they can make a trillion of these watches
> At least with cars or audio equipment there's some marginal benefits once you get to crazy numbers, not the case with watches
As an enthusiast of neither cars nor watches, I call total bullshit on this comparison. Anyone arguing they're getting utility out of their Ferrarri, Pagani, Omega or Audemars is full of themselves.
Police just aren't doing their job in the US, who even knows what they're doing at this point. Basically no country had the post-covid driver issue as much as America. Some states basically halved fines lol, make them do their jobs.
Seriously. People run reds in front of cops and they do nothing. I was tboned and the person that hit me had no license or anything to identify and ran a red and still was let go without anything.
This is what happens to your country when you don't really care about public services (in many cases they're looked down upon, just look at teachers, federal workers but also police). There's difficulty recruiting and retaining police officers in the US (i'd imagine anywhere but especially the US) because it's not seen as a good job. I'm not a huge believer in IQ but intelligent and capable people just can't be convinced to go into this line of work unless they truly care about their community (very rare). Just way more fun to go to the big city and work in an office with an AC.
I'm sure there's a million other reasons why people don't want this job, but this reflects in how harsh you can be on (new) agents.
that is a big part of it. Directly, people don't give the police enough respect, and indirectly, they don't encourage politicians to develop policy to support the police.
The amount of times I've seen cops just sitting in their cars playing on their phones or loitering around chatting and ignoring everything around them is ridiculously high.
Reddit has made it impossible to check the history of accounts this past week. They certainly want to make it as difficult as possible to see if someone is 'real'.
A large part of it is originally rooted in racism if you look how the US implemented its welfare state. Many benefits were skewed towards white americans (GI Bill, right to claim land, redlining and social security). I'm sure most Americans aren't nearly as racist right now as back then but the being 'on their own' is linked to the 'don't want 'lazy' african americans to get benefits'.
Social security had exceptions for farmworkers as well as domestic workers (which was the majority of black people at the time of creation). GI Bill had far more benefits for white Americans as they used it to join great universities in emerging fields. Black Americans mostly used it to go into trades school or underfunded black universities. Access to mortgages through the GI bill was far greater for white people.
Although most these things are better now these things have long lasting consequences for the wealth distribution in the US.
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