Man, that table is wild. South Africa has a lower life expectancy than Afghanistan and in Russia women live 12 years longer than men? Bonkers.

Unfortunately, these nerds (in the negative sense) make it often almost impossible to find “decent enough” stuff. Try finding any information about the “pretty good, but not unreasonably priced” bracket in almost any niche. Almost impossible. Unless audio equipment costs at least one kidney, it’s essentially worthless, instead of buying a sub 1000€ knife, honed by japanese virgins, you should better kill yourself, and denim that doesn’t require 400 elaborate steps to break in is literally worse than Hitler.

Another approach is to use 3-4 star reviews. These have a higher chance of being human and often contain common problems.

because that’s literally an argument Musk is pushing.

Just like children.

Also, most deaths are not immediate.

Malnutrition, HIV, even dirty water take a while to kill anyone. Arguing nobody died yet is like throwing 30 children off the roof and saying nobody’s hurt, since they’re still 5m above ground.

You might as well argue that healthy people are a drag since care in old age is so expensive.

See, I’m German. We have a solidarity based health insurance (mostly). I’m a young, reasonably healthy guy with a reasonably high income. All in all I pay 840€ every month (that’s the maximum amount), even though I cost next to nothing. And I’m okay with that.

Yes, smoking is bad and I don’t like smokers. But denying them healthcare is deeply deeply inhumane. And in Germany even unconstitutional.

I’m really confused about his statement.

I mean, let’s assume he’s right, and let’s assume that a vaccine only protects you for, say, 20 years. Just measles induced encephalitis alone has a lethality of 0.1%. How many cases of anything more than a mild fever did any vaccine ever cause? He’s not even claiming it’s causing autism or death or transformation into Space Godzilla. So why not just vaccinate? It’s stupid even in his own world.

That’s unfortunately an extremely slippery slope.

If vaccines (or lack thereof) are enough to refuse “service”, why treat lung cancer in smokers? What about type 2 diabetes?

Yes, because you’re completely missing the point.

There is literally no risk involved for them in just staying. They had their jobs, and they could easily do the right thing by just following the law. If they were to be fired, they would still get severance of some sort. In any case, it would have slowed down Elon at least for a while.

What they did instead is resigning, thus not getting severance, not being able to slow anything down, making room for obedient bootlickers, and finally they’re now unemployed.

So tell me again: how is resigning the right move? They made the world worse, and they made their personal life worse. Literally no benefit for anyone.

Your entire argument is ex post. You see the fact that they resigned as a given and try to justify that. Why can’t you see that this is not a necessary condition?

… because they resigned. Seriously, what’s your point?

If they wouldn’t have resigned, they would still have a job. And since they couldn’t have been fired easily, they would have continued to have a job for quite a while.

That’s not a complex concept, what’s so hard to understand about that?

No. They resigned from a job. They were not fired. And as long as they don’t break any rules, it’s hard to fire them.

That’s the thing, though. They’re not really taking risks.

Much of what DOGE does is completely illegal and does not go through the proper channels and processes. By simply doing their jobs and forcing everything through the proper processes, they can slow down everything, maybe even to a halt, while being completely in the right and thus can’t be fired.

Yes, it takes a mental toll, but these guys have a responsibility.

It’s funny that “veterans benefits” are a separate category.

Like, what exactly are they veterans of? Walmart? Communists might argue, that this is actually military budget in disguise!!!

But it’s also not that complicated to see through his lies. Or any demagogues for that matter.

That’s what I mean by “against better knowledge”. They have to willfully ignore the warning signs and contradictions. And that I don’t understand.

That’s the thing, it’s not tied to a specific nation.

Here in Germany, poor people are voting for a party that wants to abolish minimum wage, unemployment benefits and healthcare. Farmers were protesting last year against a reduction of subsidies - and they supported a party that wants to abolish all of their subsidies.

Look at brexit, Meloni, Geert Wilders, Milei. It’s the same everywhere.

I would really like to have a real psychological analysis of this behavior.

It’s not like this is the first time, people vote against their interests and against their better knowledge everywhere and all the time. Are they really just that stupid?

Did you watch too many NCIS episodes?

They don’t care.

This entire debate relies on the assumption that they have any respect for the law. Nobody, literally not a single person in that administration will be held accountable for breaking the law.

They’ll try 200 different laws, orders, whatever. 180 of them will be declared illegal. And then what? Nothing. No punishment at all.

And they’ll try again and again and again. Slowly eroding the entire government.

Nobody has the intention to build a wall eat the rich.

You know what it’s called if you get a disease?

TRANSMISSION!!

Think about it.