I also belong to a marginalized group. I agree that belief in conspiracy and lack of knowledge is a big driver, but what legitimizes belief in conspiracy, at least from conversations I’ve had with others, seems to stem from government mistrust.

I also agree with you that urgency is key in dealing with Covid. I am just hesitant to impose top-down restrictions without enough community support. I’ve seen enough instances of top-down impositions back-fire because there was not enough understanding of the primary motivations of why people behaved the way they do. I can name several countries that right now are currently dealing with high death tolls, even though they have tried strict lockdowns and do indeed have some access to vaccines. In these cases, it appears to me that the primary reason for low compliance is a broader lack of faith and trust in government. Whereas community led organization can be far more effective, for example, among indigenous groups in the US.

I understand that laws are by definition coercive. Ideally they would be minimally so, that way we can achieve a maximum amount of social good with minimal coercion. I also don’t disagree with the choice to pursue non-association with those who are unvaccinated by those who deem the risk too high.

My point is that if you use a hammer approach, i.e. mandating vaccination so quickly and especially when many individuals could come from marginalized communities whose skepticism may arise from a legitimate history of mistrust (for example, the US has and still has a long history of government-led abuse towards various communities, one example is forced sterilization ). Rather than succumbing to authoritarian approaches, the long-term reward is greater when putting the effort in methods that value and respect individual agency, build trust and can lead to mutually agreeable outcomes.

And so you’d rather treat them like children and rob them of agency? Unrestricted authority is a slippery slope. I wouldn’t be so quick to jump on coercing people without broader efforts that focus on discussion and transparency. Otherwise, how can we expect to live in a cooperative society if we just bully each other?

I agree. More effort should be emphasized on transparently matching scientific understanding to the general public. It’s not fair to punish people in an age where disinformation is so widespread.

Agree with this. Might as well just have freight rail + battery trucks at the end points.

There’s some discussion below on trolley buses, although Toronto specific. Seems like trolley buses have had a very short range battery for a while now, in case of emergency need to go off wire. Also, the issue of detachment appears to be more about operational maintenance, the below suggests that Vancouver has been good at minimizing wire detachments. Also, interesting to note that the average life-cycle of trolley buses is 20-24 years as opposed to diesel buses which is around 10-14. I’m not sure where ebuses would fit in, since we haven’t yet had enough testing of them yet.

https://stevemunro.ca/2021/03/05/are-ebuses-the-answer-to-everything/

Electric bikes make motorcycles pure vanity methods of transport nowadays.

deleted by creator

I think that might be it. Thanks for pointing out. Will update soon.

Edit: Yup, works now!

Strange, still not working for me.

I get SSL error 35 using gmnlm.

Correct, but the graph above is household mortgages, not commercial buildings. So this debt is indeed originated largely by banks directly to consumers. It is then re-securitized and sold off to more institutional investors who end up holding the debt as an asset, but the liability is on the household side.

Well, there is debt and equity. Retirement savings are already largely held in equity and in government bonds. You could argue that some of this is used to finance bank equity and ends up supporting a business model that uses deposits for consumer loans, but that’s a small portion of savings.

Basically, what I’m saying is you can shift most of the debt above to productive investment, rather than to finance consumption of things that should be by right (housing, education, transportation, health care).

The primary sources of debt in the US is mortgages, at roughly 70% of all outstanding debt. On top of that 10% is a combination of auto and student loans. Already you can eliminate 80% of debt without even touching personal loans or credit card loans used to finance consumption.

Add credit cards to that, you’ve reached roughly 90% of all household debt in the US. The remaining 10% really depends on what it is that one wants to ‘buy’. It’s entirely possible to provide those services without loans.

Exactly, given imessage/facetime was used on iOS, virtually every iPhone is at risk. The same applies to Android depending on whether the exploit depends on something at the OS level or software like Whatsapp.

Diversity of OS is certainly a way to go, but ultimately, tying your identity to a device that communicates with a cell phone tower makes this needlessly hard. Your phone number easily identifies a device. For a firm as sophisticated as NSO, Linux is not an obstacle, as it is not free of potential exploits. It’s moreso identifying a device as belonging to you that puts you at risk.

Ultimately, if one is truly at risk of state intelligence, one should simply not use a device that relies on a cell phone network that can be easily traced to you.

I can agree with that. In such circumstances, how do you minimize foreign intervention influence while simultaneously avoiding repressing discussion of domestic grievances?

No doubt, the US blockade is criminal.

Certainly, no one is in favour of foreign intervention (i.e. US). I wonder though how much is driven by legitimate grievances due to economic mismanagement? As per this thread.

Why are there 5 down votes on this? Why not express thoughts in comments?

That’s true, you can offer other assets as collateral to secure a loan, but that is typically for unsecured loans (where the loan is not applied to some underlying asset). In this case, the underlying asset, the highway and presumably also the land for the highway, would likely be the collateral on the loan.

In any case, one should be extremely wary of state actors in the case of sovereign debt. The potential geopolitical risk can be great, as we saw in the case of Greece when it tried to default on its debt.