alvvayson

Dude, thanks for sharing!

I am learning a lot.

One question that I do wonder about a lot is: did early Christians believe that their pagan friends and family would burn in hell?

My understanding is that hell (as we know it) was a much later invention.

Thanks for posting this.

Indeed, most religions are quite tolerant of other religions.

Christianity and Islam are the two biggest exceptions. They are religions of empire and designed to spread along with empire.

This is not to say that people of other religions can't be violent or intolerant, but as an example, you can find quite a lot of Hindus who also have a picture of Jesus or Mary in their shrine.

I firmly believe that the original Christianity was not like this. It became like this after the Romans leveraged it as a state religion 300 years after it started. And Mohammed copied that Roman idea another 400 years later.

In don't agree with people downvoting you for sharing your honest thought.

What I would say is this: more and more countries are looking to lower the voting age to 16.

I think that's a nice step to give the youth a little more say.

And for the rest, people don't seem to realize that all their investments will be worth nothing without workers to keep the economy chugging when they retire...

You either have kids, or you will depend on someone else's kids. Both are fine, but don't complain about picking up some of the burden to raise them.

I think you are being a bit too harsh.

The point is that a PAC that used to raise money for, and support, Nikki Haley now supports Harris.

Which conceivably indicates that some of the Haley voters will switch to Harris.

That is newsworthy and it doesn't mean that Haley endorses Harris.

No more billionaires, but everyone can be a millionaire.

The shortest path to equality is to greatly reduce taxes on the middle class and increase them on the wealthy.

It puzzles me why leftist parties don't all embrace lower taxes for the middle class.

Fair enough. The old nature vs nurture strikes again.

As a counterpoint, DNA gets very diluted very quickly, so someone like Prince Andrew has basically zero DNA in common with the earliest English kings.

On the other hand, that's one of the most f-d up family trees in the world, so just the inbreeding could explain a lot.

A lot, I dare even say most, of these people are born into wealth though.

The more rags to riches type of people tend to be more normal.

I know, but we were having a conversation about 2016 and the voters didn't pick Clinton then.

At least, not enough of them in certain swing states.

I think the latest insights are showing that it is more than just that though.

Extreme wealth also leads to mental health issues. Paranoia (leading Zuckerberg to build a $260M bunker in Hawaii), god complexes (people like Trump and Bloomberg running for president) and just general anti-social tendencies, like Musk buying twitter and impregnating SpaceX employees.

Pedophilia also deserves a special mention. Look a level deeper at the Epstein situation. Note that they were mostly after post-pubescent young girls, so it wasn't the "I am attracted to pre-pubescent kids" type of pedophilia, but the "I am so powerful, I'm going to eat the forbidden fruit" type of pedophilia.

There should definitely be a cap on wealth.

Dude, I have talked to AI bots that are more intelligent than this

Tax collection is very effective. Extremely effective, even.

That's my whole point.

You could also say, if the Democrats had nominated a more likeable candidate in 2016, we wouldn't be here.

Clinton got less votes than Obama in 2012 and 2008, even though the population had grown during that time.

And it wasn't the Bernie bros who stayed home. Polling revealed that the Bernie bros showed up.

Blaming the voters is like having your bakery go bankrupt and trying to blame people for not buying your shitty cake.

First, bake a better cake.

I am not proposing any new solution. Tax collection agencies across the European Union already audit businesses and it's a revenue generating activity.