university protests seemed to be dying down, but students walked out at columbia last week again. no comment on the specific politics, but youth protests seem to be constant, so it is important to understand why. importantly, many of the people participating in these protests are wealthy with no direct ties to people involved in or directly affected by the conflict. high schools are holding student walk-outs in support of palestine. people shared social media posts about the conflict, some radical. in parallel, the black lives matter protests also saw high youth turnout (some posted black squares on twitter in support), and this theme can generally be observed in close to all trending social issues. the truth is that people want to become part of a struggle even if they are not directly affected, because by siding with a marginalized group, they start to see themselves as marginalized as well, which brings them some type of satisfaction. people have not suffered a day in their lives, and so they engage in this "suffering tourism." but just like actual tourists, they are not actually deeply invested, but instead only care about issues at the superficial level. they do not care about solving the problem, because their goals are inherently selfish, despite their pledges to the cause. this can also explain why (besides simple incompetence, which might also still be the case) people choose to use protest as their weapon for societal change, even though protest is impotent at its core. 

spacex launched starship and caught it with mechazilla first try earlier today. we can reuse rocket ships and cure cancer and kill terrorists from thousands of miles away. how in the world do people subscribe to degrowth?? this ideology is just the highest form of cope. it is not hard to get cracked but the first step is to stop complaining as talk is a substitute for action. i am being hypocritical writing this but even talking about what you are going to do is bad, gives artificial and false sense of completion and leads to complacency. just learn more and get better and solve bigger problems. it's not that hard. 

uber launched new shuttle from laguardia to a few locations in nyc for $18, each vehicle holds 16-18 people. bandwagon reaction is "congrats, uber just invented buses" but that is so silly man. straw man of the century, but the worst part is that its unironic. really, the bigger issue here is that people can't come to terms with the correlation between poverty and being societally destructive, and even the people that do understand this get the causation wrong. poverty does not cause bad behavior. millions of good poor people disprove. people who are unfit to behave in society - e.g. criminals, or socially obnoxious people - trend towards being poor due to that behavior. the reason people want to avoid buses is not because they hate poor people, but because they hate degenerates that also happen to be poor as a result, thus forced to ride the bus. nothing backing this, but i bet if you asked 100 poor people if we need to be harsher on crime, 70+ would say yes, but left paints this picture that going hard on crime is anti-poor. honestly the poor are even bigger victims of this destructive behavior, since they don't have protection. back to uber...18 dollars isn't even crazy. this hate all stems from jealousy, because i cannot fathom why anyone would buy into this anti-cap degrowth agenda for any other reason. rich get richer, people are too ambitionless to succeed, so they fallaciously complain. degrowth is a disease. 

price gouging is key, price caps are destructive, americans need to know econ. hurricane helene (north carolina) and hurricane milton (tampa) are destroying the east/south east united states right now. consequently, prices for everything are going up. saw guy on twitter getting 400k likes for saying that airlines increasing ticket prices out of florida from $1200 to $3000 bucks is devil's work. shows how little most americans know about economics (or they just want something to hate, people have lots of hate in their hearts). realistically, price gouging key for three reasons. First, greed drives supply flow. If airline knows that they can charge 3x flying through florida, they will fly more planes through florida. no airline has an incentive to fly through any particular region if there are price caps - realistically, they would be inclined to avoid disaster areas for safety. no price gouging, no flights. Second, demand-adjusted pricing filters buyers. if prices are low or artificially capped, people will fly even if they have alternative non-flight options. however if prices are inflated, people with other options will avoid flight for cheaper alternatives - only people with flight as their only choice will take the flights. ultimately, price gouging ensures demand is filtered generally to only people who need x. Third, generalize first reason to all sectors. people bringing barrels of gas to sell at highs or even like household goods during covid are only there because they can make more money. price caps don't lead to everyone getting goods at a lower price, but instead just no one having any goods at all. alternative to price gouging (high prices high supply) is not some magical low prices high supply scenario, but just low prices low supply. pls kamala no price caps