MangoCats

I could see myself wanting to own multiple private islands, getting Larry Ellison to sell me Lanai is going to take a lot of money.

Current U.S. leadership: Our billionaires are gonna be bigger than all the other billionaires in the world put together. (I honestly believe there's an insecurity motive there: if US billionaires don't amass significantly more wealth, they won't be competitive in the billionaire world against outside billionaires.)

U.S. Democracy: If one dollar = one vote, I guess we should save all that money we have been wasting on elections.

The real reason for the surge in prosperity of the middle and lower classes after WWII: decimation of the ultra-wealthy throughout the developed world. Remember: the post WWII US income tax on the wealthy was 91% - literal decimation, for those who paid.

https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-income-tax-rates

One way a global index can respect local authority would be for the index to acknowledge that within that territory, there is an official name for things.

They can also be pragmatic and acknowledge a common local name, the global consensus name, etc.

In many ways, it's just a further fragmentation like language.

What I want to know is: what does the vote of a Republican Senator cost these days? Can we start GoFundMe campaigns to get some things changed in our preferred direction?

Saving that for 2029.

They had a pretty rough go when beaver hats were in fashion...

Some people care, but not enough yet: https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-project/

That was a company of 1000 employees, over 500 of them in the traveling global sales force. There were about seven guys at the top taking home millions a year in those bonuses, and their whole priority was to maximize their personal incomes as much and as soon as possible.

In the shiny promotional videos, we were all about helping our customers, improving their lives, but in reality we weren't very good at that, only about 1/3 customers saw any benefits and maybe 3/100 would get anything close to what they were really hoping for, but... they didn't have any alternatives, so they were willing to let their health insurance pay for a $30K surgical procedure on the chance that they might be one of the lucky ones.

Research around methods of testing to determine who might and who might not benefit from the product? Actively undermined by the company.

Research around ways to improve product performance? Squashed as I described, it was more likely to "disrupt" the short term income streams they leaders were all enjoying than to make any significant improvements in income for them on any time schedule they care about.

I think he was unexpectedly successful in winning the 2016 election.

I also think that by mid 2017 "his" administration had built up collection of "advisors" who have been increasingly calling the shots since then. They give him "on brand" scripts to read, but he's not personally orchestrating much of anything.

This is nothing new for Google, compliance with local laws...

As a business, they're respecting the current US administration - probably weighing the likelihood of penalties depending on which side of the US legal system they choose to obey.

I have spent 30 years developing computerization of traditional medical tasks. Anytime a project gets anywhere near M.D. territory they villify it mercilessly, it's a threat to their cash cow, a threat to their status as the exalted font of all knowledge, a threat to their $600K/yr practice income - they think.

Doesn't even have to be about that. Einstein was a disruptor. He scribbled some theories on paper and it dramatically reshaped the global power and wealth dynamic.

The extremely rich have a singular top priority: to stay that way. Unpredictable change, regardless of the net change for good or bad, is not their friend.

This works at all levels. I was hired into the mid level of a company to "lead research to improve the product" - but I quickly found out: that was just a carrot to get me and others like me in the door to fill roles required by regulatory bodies: so many degreed this and thats to oversee implementation of the quality procedures, etc. Everyone above Director level in that company was making fat bonuses every quarter and they didn't want ANYTHING to change, not even an improvement in the product, it was making plenty of money with no signs of competition on the horizon. To announce a potential future improvement would be to derail current sales volumes, and there were new mansions under construction that still needed more quarters of bonuses to complete.