There also has to be an aspect of the price of mozzarella in the post WW2 boom in America or else we wouldn't use such an indulgent amount of cheese as standard.
Even Canadians I know will take home an American pizza because of the ridiculous amount of cheese we put on pizza compared to Canada.
It ultimately comes down to being able to go to a physical location and get coins/paper or not.
I just don't see what the value is of having my account denominated in a way that getting coins/paper is gone. Even if we went to all digital money tomorrow we would probably quickly get a bank that denominates in gold and gives you back paper slips for proof of deposit. Or doesn't even bother with gold and gives paper slips of electronic currency deposits.
We can't even get rid of useless pennies in the US.
The moment the Rubicon is crossed, both the US and China would fall into an all out economic depression and that is exactly why that Rubicon will not be crossed in my lifetime.
This might be an issue at some point if you just graduated high school but for now we have mutually assured economic destruction.
I am far more worried about a debt bomb going off in China than a real bomb.
I have read 1984 twice. Once in 1999 and once in 2021.
The effect of the telescreen was so different from what I remember in 1999. It seemed trite in 2021.
Many aspects of 1984 would be an improvement over what we have now. I also imagine that however bad we think surveillance is now it is much more than what we believe it to be. It would hardly be shocking if voice activation is storing keywords from nearly all in person conversations.
A huge part of youth identity in the US use to be from the music business.
I mean we use to even have goth bars, punk bars. Imagine a bar in 2023 that only caters to people who like industrial or punk music. It sounds absolutely ridiculous.
The music business though was also highly connected to all other art forms in terms of the visual arts, fashion, literature.
With the change in the importance of music it basically devalued nearly all art forms compared to what use to be.
It seems like politics stepped in to fill this void for the youth. It is such a boring and disappointing development.
It is also not good for politics either to have competing factions who at 20 believe what they believe with near religious fervor.
It is because this always comes from the perspective of younger people.
Canada might be better if you are 20 and break your arm.
No one over 50 and worrying about death would rather be in Canada though.
I had family members who had heart attacks at roughly the same time, one in the US and one in Canada. It is unbelievable how slow everything goes in Canada when they were both needing basically the same treatments.
No, previous generations tended to preserve the social contract of not fucking over their grandkids so they could go out to eat more and take more vacations in retirement.
Before they were called boomers they were called "generation me". It should hardly be a surprise that this is what generation me would do in old age.
It is because there are all kinds of cost not being factored in here.
You aren't going to keep the subscription base without spending a ton on marketing.
I am sure many other cost that we aren't thinking about since not in the magazine business.
To me, I am a prime example of someone who use to absolutely love magazines who could not be bothered now. There is no price that will get me to subscribe. I just don't want to be sent paper in the mail.
>You aren't going to keep the subscription base without spending a ton on marketing
If you do quality work, you don't need to spend a ton on marketing. And this is very livable revenue - tons of media outlets thrived on less (inflation adjusted) back in the day.
The main problem is belonging to some conglomerate who doesn't care for such small profits or a business breaking even. They're an insect to them.
A corporation running from a non-profit dedicated to the mission (as opposed to those greedy people), or passionate private owner(s), would have no problem to continue.
I don’t know how to put this but you are just absolutely wrong about the economics of this and beyond that you are confidently wrong even when presented with basic numbers.
Producing what National Geographic magazine does is not cheap and they have historically had much higher revenue. Nevermind that they are still continuing, just without staff writers.
>Producing what National Geographic magazine does is not cheap
Nobody said it is. But what it used to cost to run it in the times of media excess and a much larger subscriber base, is not really reflective of what it can run on and still get good stories today.
Today though photo reporting and writing is much more competitive and cheaper than it has been, even at the top. Glassdoor puts NatGeo salaries at a $65K median.
And freelancers sent on a story are paid like 20K or so for 3 weeks salary plus expenses (for Americans. Regional freelancers can usually be paid even less). That makes 5 such stories per issue at 1.2M (internal editing, processing etc is already covered by regular staff, as is more generic articles that are not in the field assignments).
Though I'm agree with you about conglomerate that doesn't care I honestly kek'd at If you do quality work, you don't need to spend a ton on marketing.
To find a way to your potential customers is a continuous and never ending task for most businesses.
Your point about the doomsday AI cultists is nonsense.
The doomsday AI cultists didn't come up with any of these ideas. The Matrix was a hugely popular movie in 1999.
chatGPT doesn't make the person who has believed since 1999 that AI is going to turn us all into Duracell batteries more correct. It is the same basic thought with with paper clips replacing batteries.
Their point is that AI is now suddenly much closer to AGI than any experts predicted it would be. Well other than the “Technological Singularity” guy, who was ludicrously on the money - I think he said 20-30 years from 1993?
Even Canadians I know will take home an American pizza because of the ridiculous amount of cheese we put on pizza compared to Canada.