Some plastics are more stable than others. That said, we are admittedly far too lackadaisical with them in general.

To answer your direct question, we do have an FDA that does a passable job with some things, salmonella outbreaks, emergency vaccine development, stuff like that. There is probably some regulatory capture at play, though, where business interests get their people appointed into oversight roles. When a full half of our government is so vocally and rabidly pro-business, this is difficult to prevent in the long run.

Prob just a territory, really. Can’t be ruining our perfectly even 100 Senators.

That’s a really great analogy. lol “This is going to be really mentally scarring for you, and the stains will never come out of your clothes, you know…”

I never said it was fair, don’t get me wrong. How it got this way vs whether that’s a good idea or not are two totally separate topics.

I’m not sure that most boards of directors are full of CEOs either. It is full of rich people though.

The CEO does not set his own compensation. He is hired by the owners of whatever company to operate it for them. They ultimately determine the compensation.

I agree there’s no struggle to find top candidates, that’s for sure. That’s partly because the compensation tends to be very good. The trades, which do not compensate as well as a chief executive, are struggling more. If plumbers frequently pulled CEO pay, we would not have a shortage.

Sometimes a person does not have any good options available to them, but they still have to make a choice.

It’s not an absolute, it’s just an incentive. Talent is also an intangible, it cannot really be measured. Nor does high pay in some way guarantee you will get a talented or qualified person for your position, it just gives you better odds. It’s bait, basically, but you cannot guarantee your bait will work to attract what you want.

I’m not sure of any evidence, I’m not an economist. I’m discussing the theory of how capitalist systems are intended to function. How well they succeed at this is very messy and muddled at best.

Lastly, I actually disagree that our hypothetical construction person makes less because they are less talented. It’s that their skill is in lower demand. They could be extremely talented, but there are simply more of them available, so less needs to be offered to attract them.

She seems to be playing politics. Kissing his ass may be extremely distasteful and embarrassing, but it’s also a prudent move when his foreign policy is based so heavily on his own personal feelings towards another country’s leader. It’s the hand she’s dealt, so I don’t blame her for playing it this way.

It’s a big if, but if she actually is seeking American support against encroaching Russian influence for the sake of her citizens, then I respect the decision and would offer her a bottle of mouthwash to maybe get the taste of Trump’s ass out of her mouth. I cannot imagine that tasted good.

Hypothetically, if you were looking at two civil engineering jobs, and one paid 100k/yr, and another paid 200k/yr, which would you pick?

Would it matter much if any of the construction guys doing the actually construction of your projects made 50k/yr? Are they less talented than you for that?

It’s not so much about “talentless hacks” vs “a decent job” as trying to entice the best person you can afford.

Certainly. But anti-elitist sentiment is broader than just this country, as is anti-capitalist sentiment. There’s a broad coalition of people that would celebrate something like this for a variety of reasons. I try to avoid taking people online purely at face value, since its so easy and commonplace to simply spin one’s opinions slightly into something that seems similar to solidarity with one specific position, but in reality is operating from a subtly different motive in an enemy-of-my-enemy sort of way.

That said, I do agree that a lot of it is from Americans. But it would be in the interest of a variety of different chaos-interested positions to amplify that in any way possible. To a communist, its class warfare. To a geopolitical rival, it’s a blow against stability. To the far right, it’s a blow against the liberal order. To social media companies its an enticing engagement. Etc etc etc.

edit for a typo and an extra example

War is very seldom inevitable. We tend not to focus much attention on wars that never started, because that does not make for very engaging history content. It happens far more frequently than a war actually starting though.

It’s useful to remember that Americans are a minority on the English-speaking internet. There’s only 330 million of us, while the world has an estimated 1.5 billion English speakers. Probably much more if we include people that just know some of the language.

English is the global trade language, it’s frequently taken in school as a second language all over the world. If you learn some English, the amount of activities available to you dramatically increases.

We’ll see. While Trump’s campaign rhetoric was decidedly anti-Ukrainian, the person he put in charge as envoy is a much more level-headed fellow.

No, a company definitely doesn’t have to pay their CEOs generously, and not all do. The median pay for a CEO is actually about 250k/yr.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm

Though if we just look at CEOs from S&P 500 companies, that jumps up to 16 million. There’s going to be a lot of factors involved, from the size of the company to the cost of living in the area. A CEO in San Francisco is probably going to make a lot more than one in Milwaukee.

It’s less propaganda and more just understanding how the capitalist system is intended to function. It applies to other jobs as well, a software engineer can make quite a wide range of pay, depending on who they work for. Then they can also get increased pay for advancing up the ranks of their organization, as promotions often involve raises.

This is more of a system issue than bad behavior of an individual charity.

Charities can underpay a little bit, because working for a charity has its own appeal. But if you want a talented, experienced person to run your org, you have to consider what they could make if they worked for someone else. San Diego is not a cheap city, and has its fair share of CEO positions.

If you really want to stretch your dollar though, local food banks are probably a better bet.

They don’t really think it that far through. Policy proposals aren’t considered, it’s more about vibe.

After the election, AOC reached out to her constituents to ask why some of them would vote for both Trump and her.

There’s a variety of answers, but the general sentiment is people want some way to “shake up Washington” without a real understanding of how exactly that would work or what would happen.

There’s no way to know for sure, I imagine, but I do hope our intelligence agencies are counterattacking. Defense is great and all, but sometimes some offense becomes appropriate.

Depends on platform I suppose. Here, the level of activity is low enough that if you’re reading the comments, you’re usually reading all of them. In a major reddit sub that is seldom the case.

Those trolls live off of engagement

Not anymore. Back in the day trolling was a recreational activity done for fun. Deny the fun, cut off the troll’s food. Now it’s being done for political purposes, so cutting off the fun no longer functions since it no longer strikes at the primary motivation.