Tl:dr- corporations do bad things to give us what we ask for. Like your friend brining you a PS4 but you find out he beat up a child and stole it. But you want the PS4 so even if you CALL HIM a sack of shit- you take the PS4 and pay him $100 because that’s better than any Black Friday deal. And he does it again and you pay him every time. So if you’re being rewarded for something why would you stop doing it? Stop buying shit from people who you think are garbage. It’s cheap because the price was paid in human misery. That’s how it works.

When people say “screw physical media- I’ll stream it all...” you don’t think that impacts people you don’t see every day? That such a huge shift doesn’t change anything? Consumers lead the demands that businesses then try to meet. Businesses then often compete and it’s easier to “lower” their tactics than elevate their game. Then consumers reward the business that wins the “I’m the lowest, shadiest company” war by giving them money.

So some company that streams music or lets you watch your dogs from work or wash your car using WiFi or whatever bs- pays Amazon a truck full of money to host them so they don’t have to buy and maintain the equipment. Then they charge you money and give a chunk to Amazon. The guys running the servers get paid a bit more to do that than a warehouse hand because one of them can do the others job (even if poorly,) but not vice versa- it’s harder to find one than the other. Then every other company has to jump on the cloud or be left behind because the consumer is moving that way.

In the case of Amazon- most of its profit actually doesn’t even come from consumers. They run server farms and big data for companies. The “cloud,” if you’ve ever heard of that? When you are running cloud based applications that money is going places like Amazon and google and the guys that own the servers and the software.

My point wasn’t that Jiffy Jeff is a great guy- my point is that it’s far more complex than people make it out to be, and that we all have an actual ability to change it on our own if we decide to stop giving Jeff Bezos money.

If I make 1 billion dollars off selling $5 sunglasses- I paid the guy making he glasses and trucking the glasses and all the employees etc $3 of those dollars and kept $2 each pair. I have a billion because half a billion people gave me $2. If you cut it to $1 or even just take all my money- you can give those half a billion people $1-2. That doesn’t really help most folks. If they didn’t buy the glasses they’d have $5 anyway which is 5x more than $1 if the math is confusing you.

If I was sucking his dick I’d be a lot richer homeboy. He can defend himself. I’m using him as an example. As I said- his treatment of employees is wrong. But the popular sentiment that we could magically fix all this by cutting down some billionaires doesn’t hold up to logic. Read a book. It’s called velocity model.

Lol. I wish. I was never super big but maybe closer to the 2nd panel. People hate it when I say it but I’m cursed with a natural ability to drop weight. I can lose 10lbs (not water weight) with ease, but I have to fight for every ounce of muscle and eat like a horse to do it. At the height of my training some years ago I was eating about 6,000 calories a day. There were a couple evenings late at night when I hadn’t gotten my macros that I had to just go find a place that was open and drink a gallon of milk or eat a whole cake by myself! Not very healthy but I needed the calories more than anything.

Thank you. I enjoy your posts- they tend to be either humorous or well reasoned (they can be both too. Lol.) I try to stay positive, but I have my phases and moods too. I embrace the dream the world could be perfect but do my bed to reconcile that with reality. There’s enough suffering in the world that I just figure wherever possible we can at least try to ease it- even if nothing we do may ever eliminate it.

No worries. And thank you.

Make it so.

Most people are ignorant with food and nutrition and careless- without thought. That applies to omnivores and vegans and every diet. Whatever you eat you can easily be unhealthy and easily contribute to harm to the planet because the people and their habits stay the same even if the menu changes. So my point is- lay off PETA and militant vegans. Because YOUR conscience told you this is right for you doesn’t mean everyone else’s does. Eating meat is like abortion. We can argue all day about morality and social impact but at the end of the day, it should be up to the individual to make the choice they think is best, and it isn’t someone else’s place to shame them based on their morals.

Soy and tofu production are major contributors to deforestation and environmental pollution for example- and that is at current levels of consumption. I’m not saying don’t be a vegan or vegetarian. I’m not saying every vegan or vegetarian falls under this umbrella. Some only eat “real” food or are very careful about their impact and or health.

And if you could see the future like Dr. strange- every version ever- and you could see that in every future things worked out fine- what would you have to worry about? Nothing. You know in the end despite the details it all goes to plan. Doesn’t mean some things won’t puss you off or annoy you on the way- just means it will end up fine.

So say you plan to go to the beach with Suzy- you’ll get a good meal and enjoy the day. You picture taking your car, leaving at 8, grabbing eggs at that place you like. Ok. Suzy sleeps in. Your car won’t start. The two of you leave at noon. You take the bus. You grab some hot dogs from a vendor near the beach. They are awesome. You end up having a great day. Things didn’t go the way you wanted- but in the end your “plan” was done. Go to the beach, with Suzy, have a good meal, enjoy your day. All of that happened. So “God has a plan” could just mean that no matter what happens- in the end everything ends up right where it is supposed to be no matter what a bunch of free willed monkeys do.

Then we have to look at “god has a plan...” That doesn’t inherently mean that god micromanaged everything in the universe. “The big 3” God religions make it pretty clear there’s some measure of free will. God KNOWS what you’ll do but doesn’t make you do it. God could stop you but that’s at the discretion of an all knowing being right?

But most of the time nothing is really “hidden,” it’s all in records and what not- it’s just most people don’t care to or don’t want to look. Look at the news from the last few years even. People can do most things in plain view of the world and walk away fine. The country is arguing wether it’s ok or not for a president to use the office as leverage with foreign leaders for their own gain. There are conspiracies but most of the time the dirt happens in front of us and the only part that’s hidden is the real reason why.