KaiReeve

Correct. Low HP, high torque, relaxed seating position. It's a bit heavy, but the center of gravity is low enough that it's manageable. I've nearly dropped it twice, but I've managed to keep it off the ground.

An interesting note about those new industries you mentioned: they're all contractors. When people talk about working for Uber or door dash they typically aren't saying 'this is what I want to do for the rest of my life', it's more of a holdover until something better comes along. As these individual companies begin the process of automation it may be that contract work is what most of end up doing. Once most of us are contractors it will become a supply and demand situation where we all seek to underbid one another in order to feed ourselves and our families. We would still be working, but it would be like fighting over scraps.

If 90% of the workforce was suddenly laid off and left to starve, what do you actually think would happen? That we'd all just sit at home and quietly die? Ask the french royalty what happens when it's population realizes that it's main hope to not starve to death is to dismantle the existing system and start over.

You're right, of course, but I doubt that it would happen suddenly. The process of automating 90% of the work force would likely take decades and be a long, slow process with a lot of half measures a long the way to appease the masses, much like we experience today. I imagine full-time work will be redefined to fewer hours and eventually we will need something like UBI to supplement us and drive the economy. Tax burdens will likely shift to corporations in order to keep the government running as human labor will slowly phase out.

And there's only profit to be had in any case if there are people with money to buy things.

I think that this is the crux of the argument. As automation becomes cheaper than human labor, human labor becomes intrinsically less valuable. This means that any paid work will simply pay less, which gives the lower classes even less purchasing power. Wealth concentration will continue to worsen and the middle class will evaporate. If capitalism continues, it is at this point industry and economy will revolve primarily around the needs of the rich. The people will still be a consideration, of course, but more of a liability than an exploitable resource. A world war ending in nuclear holocaust would likely solve that particular problem, but I'm hopeful that capitalism will be abandoned before it comes to that.

When an individual company looks to increase profit margins they can either increase the price of their product or reduce the cost it takes to produce it. For the vast majority of companies the primary cost for their product is labor. Employees require a living wage, health care, paid time off, and also create additional costs like payroll taxes and an entire HR department.

With automation you have a high initial cost, but it pays out exponentially over time. Sure you still have software costs, repairs, retrofits, and all that goes into maintaining your typically modern assembly line, but you don't have to worry about your robots suing you for sexual harassment or wrongful termination. You don't have to worry about busting unions or hazardous working conditions. You can fire your entire HR and payroll departments, too, which is even better for the bottom line.

Because it's so financially appealing to so many industries to cut out human labor, I consider it an inevitability. The rich will continue to do what's best for themselves and they don't really care if the rest of us all die off from starvation or war.

Now, that's not to say that it will all happen over night. Over the next half century it will likely be as you say where jobs just get more and more concentrated as they squeeze every dollar they can from each individual employee, but if you look far enough into the future we will all become unemployable. And when horses became unemployable, we didn't set aside 100 acres for them to live their best lives in. We made glue.

Your first bike was a busa and you survived?

2022 Triumph Bobber

It's my first bike and I love it

Free time.

As more and larger industries become automated we will have all the free time we can handle. What we do as a society today will determine whether that free time is spent pursuing our personal interests, or fighting over the last scraps of a dying planet.

People in the US are trying to change things. Most new homes in my area have a strong emphasis on green technology including heat pumps and solar panels. There's a big push for EVs over ICEs and there are more and more EV charging stations all over the country every year. The younger generations are calling for more train transportation and Amtrak in my area is actually making some changes to help promote passenger rail.

Your 'blame the west' mentality is some serious PRC propaganda bullshit. 0 of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world are western cities. Most of them are in India, which is actually where these Cheetahs died.

You want to blame someone? Blame the international elite. The 0.1% takes what they want, consequences be damned.

A successful social media community is largely dependent on discussion and the proliferation of memes, but Science Fiction is a pretty broad subject matter. You could try to increase engagement by narrowing it down a bit. For example, you could pin a weekly or daily discussion about the latest Sci Fi news and media or create a 'book of the month' club to help focus discussion.

I understand that the government needs money to function, I just want them to stop taking 30%+ of my income in order to buy billion dollar boats that shoot million dollar bullets.

This all sounds a little farfetched, but if this isn't all hot air then it sounds like Mr. Mafia has the local PD in his pockets somehow. If you want the site investigated then you're either going to have to contact a higher power or the local news station.

Idk how it works where you are, but here 3+ bodies makes it a serial killer which means that the feds can get involved, but you pretty much just hand it off and hope for the best.

If you want to pursue it more personally, then get in touch with a local news station or an investigative journalist. If it's a slow news day they may take the time to look into it, but they may ask you for an interview which could open you and your family up to retaliation.

If your FIL had written and signed a confession you may have more to work with because as it stands you have to hope that a valuable plot of land going unexploited is curious enough to warrant a second look. You should also be aware that if Mr. Mafia knows that it could become an issue, he may just move the bodies and then you really are just wasting everyone's time.

Definitely refinement.

Man used to build 'natural' tools and shelters and some still do in the most remote parts of the planet. Mud huts and arrowheads are man-made yet also natural. I think we left the 'natural' path when we started smelting, domesticating, tanning, irrigating, etc. We took naturally formed materials and refined or processed them into something you can't just stunble upon in nature. A billion planets in a billion years will not naturally produce an internal combustion engine without some sort of intelligent intervention.

This is the real issue right here. It's more than just Airbnb's, though, it's all 'investment real estate'.

The solution would be to exponentially increase taxes for those who own multiple properties, but property tax is typically handled on the county level, so this would be tricky. Also, the people who could implement such a tax all own multiple properties, so there's a conflict of interest there.