Bush Sr. and Jr. are breathing a sign of relief!

“That’s when I realized the threads were stripped.”

What amazes me are the number of companies selling “lifetime” VPN service or “lifetime” cloud storage service with a straight face.

Like… that is TRANSPARENTLY a scam. You’re literally gonna sell lifetime licenses to people with more money than common sense, until the entire system is overloaded, then just go out of business.

While I’m not naive enough to think there will be any meaningful reduction in personal car usage in my remaining lifetime (~20-30 years), I’d like us to START making infrastructure investments that will at least point us in the right direction. But no, it’s endless stroads and sprawl and retail development and single family housing as far as the eye can see.

That auto-drive-ready car will be ready for auto-drive any time now, we swear!

I remember back in the 90s John Stossel did a piece on money and happiness, and he complained that surveys show that happiness stops increasing somewhere around 60-80K per year income, so clearly money does not buy happiness.

Median household income at the time was about $30K per year.

Of course, how this would actually work:

Workers: “What do we get?”

AR: “Well, half of you are fired, the other half keep working just as hard.”

<later>

AR: “What’s with the guillotine?”

Workers: “We’re acting in our rational self-interest.”

AR: “I see.”

AR: <to the fired workers> “They’re the reason you can’t get a job. If they didn’t form a UNION to keep you OUT, you’d be doing just fine! And I can’t fire THEM, thanks to the UNION.”

AR: <to the employed workers> “Well, I’d love to give you more time off, but I can’t, because those MOOCHERS over there are freeloading on the system, and I gotta pay outrageous taxes for their welfare because THEY DON’T WORK.”

Media: “Let’s talk to two experts in the labor field.”

Expert 1: “Oh, the problem is definitely abusive, bloated unions and exclusive contracts.”

Expert 2: “Oh, the problem is definitely freeloading welfare queens.”

Workers: <try to push each other into the guillotine>

AR: Flies away in her golden private jet, “MUHAHAHAHAHA!”