It doesn’t show how well a country is doing, because GDP is not a direct measure of aggregate utility. For example: GDP can go up, but if it causes the Gini coefficient to rise, a country could be doing much worse than before.

But that’s not what you wrote. You claimed that it doesn’t show new information because you can see the favicon and title. It does show new information.

When I shop online, I have many tabs from the same site open. The tab title is the store name + the item name, so the item name never fits. A bunch of identical ebay icons is way worse than this.

It’s not objectively better or worse. Some people will prefer it and some people won’t.

Why are you getting downvoted? Why is Lemmy defending rich corporations and not consumers??

You opened dry pasta in a dry room and got less than the advertised amount. If there’s residual moisture in the factory that evaporates, that is their problem, not ours. Yes it’s a small variation, but that reasoning works both ways: they should include a few extra strands to make sure the consumer gets the right amount.

Americans pay more in taxes towards healthcare than any other country, and then pay for private healthcare on top of that.

How is it “functionally” walled? How is it far from “anyone can simply download and run”? It literally is just that. Anyone can download anything and run any unsigned code. I am baffled by the fact that all the people correcting you are getting downvoted.

These countries have similarities, but this seems more like simplistic stereotypes and generalizations.

South Korea’s suicide rate is almost double that of Japan’s. Japan has a lower suicide rate than the US, and similar to European countries like Sweden.

South Koreans work some of the longest hours of any rich country. They’re closer to India and Mexico than Europe. The Japanese work fewer hours than the US. Yes, Japanese people work too much, but I think Americans don’t realize that they work too much too.

I agree with the first part, but I’m confused by “Individualism is great”. Not sure what individualism has to do with it.

Is this supposed to contrast with the US, a country where people work some of the longest hours in the developed world? I think the whole “the West is free and individualistic and Asians are conformist robots” thing is a myth.

Though it was even cheaper in the past, gasoline today is still VERY cheap in the US because the US has one of the lowest fuel taxes in the developed world. Economists, right and left, love the gas tax because driving incurs so many negative externalities.

Incidentally, this is one reason why roads and bridges are falling apart in such a rich country. The fuel tax pays for infrastructure and it is way too low.

That theory doesn’t make much sense to me. The military conflicts have been political losers for Biden. Polling consistently shows that Americans believe (for some insane reason) that the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts wouldn’t have happened under Trump. Gaza in particular has split Biden’s base. The best thing that could happen for Biden is if all the conflicts end before the election.

As an American who moved to Canada, there are similarities but Canada is still one million times better than the US.

The CRA (Canadian IRS) allows digital access to all tax info. Whatever software or service you use, just log into your CRA account and everything auto-fills. Done in a few minutes. My US taxes have never taken less than an hour, and often multiple hours if there’s anything remotely complicated.

Can’t follow directions?

What is this, tax advice from Stack Overflow? I don’t understand why people like you don’t save your criticism for the system, instead of at the people using the system.

Yes, the system is fucked up… because the instructions are intentionally designed to be complicated to follow. I don’t know a single person stupid enough to waste their time doing their own taxes by following the directions on the IRS documentation. Horrible advice. Not even professional tax accountants do that.

The IRS free tax-filing service is in limited trial in a few states, eligible only to simple returns within limited income ranges. Most people, including 1099 people like OP, can’t use it.

Your response is tone deaf. The American tax code is intentionally complicated to protect tax filing companies and to allow the rich to take advantage of loop holes. I can’t believe how housebroken some people are that they defend the shitty tax system instead of sharing in OP’s anger.

There are legitimate worries concerning the commodification of people’s bodies. We already do not allow people to sell oneself into slavery, and many countries do not allow the selling of one’s own body parts (which is why organs must be donated in many countries).

I’m the only one here who knows anyone who’s used surrogacy, and it was for a legit health reason.

I’m not sure why you think it matters, but my sibling recently had a child through surrogacy. No one is disagreeing about the health case. But more exploitative cases can exist. Not everything should be made into a product.

In most existing TCG, artificial scarcity is a meta-mechanic of the game. For many, that’s part of the fun of the “collecting“. It’s fun to collect rare cards because they’re in limited supply.

That said, I think there could be, in theory, an open source way to have artificial scarcity and the fun of collecting. Maybe have a nonprofit that sells official printed cards at cost?

Are you two substantially disagreeing?

When surrogacy is merely a luxury to spare the rich mother the discomforts of bearing a child, it can be bad, and for other reasons such as health and infertility it’s totally fine?

Well said. This feels like an existential election for Taiwan.

This might be the first time I’ve heard a demand imposed on Israel from the US during this recent escalation. Hopefully, the first of many.

modular houses are nice, but they’re all similar to each other

I’m not so sure. New American and Canadian houses are famously similar to each other. We build big neighborhood blocks of almost identical looking track houses. If I could, instead, order a house from online catalogs, that might actually increase aesthetic diversity.

We used to have more diversity in housing styles, which is why older neighborhoods have lots of different home styles. But a lot of those 100 year old neighborhoods are actually full of Sears catalog homes. Basically, pre-cut, pre-fabricated modular homes!