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Comment on Nonstop Wildfires Are Straining the Global Arsenal to Fight Them

I can think of two things that are utterly verboten yet will force us to do some soul searching.

One is to repeal every law across the board that requires businesses to keep delivering growing profits. Those laws have done their job splendidly and are causing harm as their expiry date goes farther into the past.

Two is, repeal every law across the board that requires parental leave, daycare rebates and such other things. You just cannot continue to congratulate those who bring infants into this gas chamber of a planet.

What laws to have instead of these two? What to do with our own lives after repealing these two laws? I don’t know. I’m merely hoping that the collective intelligence of 8 billion aided by AI and whatnot will see a way forward after these roadblocks are removed.

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princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I’m merely hoping that the collective intelligence of 8 billion aided by AI and whatnot…

Okay, two things. Firstly, AI is causing a massive acceleration in the damage we’re doing to the climate. It is incredibly power-hungry to train those models. Secondly, AI is, in fact, incredibly bloody stupid. It is not “intelligent”, and in essence is just a rebranding of what AI should be for marketing purposes. It’s not capable of novel ideas, nor does it try to be.

Please for the love of all that is good in this world could people educate themselves on how terrible AI actually is.

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- vipaal@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  💯 I used AI as a placeholder for any tools or methodologies we might use
  
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shirro@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I believe the majority of our growth comes from immigration. If we penalize Australian parents I expect business would demand the government offset a lower natural birthrate with higher immigration. Removing hard fought benefits for Australians would likely only make kids and parents lives miserable and create more inequality and social problems.

Developed countries tend to naturally adopt low birth rates even with fair allowances for parents and care givers as the financial and lifestyle sacrifices are still relatively large. The natural birthrate in Australia gets a boost from immigration and would likely trend lower if we weren’t running a huge pyramid scheme.

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- vipaal@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Australia alone cannot repeal those laws and expect to make a scratch if that. I was referring to every government across every jurisdiction all over the planet. I doubt that low birthrate would be seen as being so painful when businesses are not required to keep delivering growing profits every quarter.
  
  No civilization ever studied is known to have survived its own localised climate catastrophe or some other catastrophe. Every one of them either perished or, accepted the limitations imposed by land, air, water and lived within those limits. We might want to look inside ourselves for refusing to accept this.
  
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  - shirro@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Taking hard won gains from working people isn’t going to be popular. Most developed countries like South Korea, Japan and part of Europe already have low enough birth rates already to the point of concern about sustainability of their aging populations.
    
    Let’s life the poor out of poverty and give them access to birth control and social services so that they have choices and all the evidence suggests they will choose quality over quantity and smaller families or careers over large families.
    
    Working people fought for centuries for the conditions we currently enjoy only to have them eroded by crap like the gig economy. We should not give up parental benefits. We should give up waste and extreme consumerism not nurturing families.
    
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    vipaal@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    smh.com.au/…/climate-change-calls-for-managed-ret…
    
    I see that the available land area is shrinking at an increasing pace. Pretty sure water resources are dwindling similarly too. I see zero reasons to so much as congratulate pregnancies these days. The gains, which are codified in laws in the form of rights, to me, look basically like promises made by lawmakers to their citizens. Lawmakers are people too. And people keep their promises on a best effort basis. With dwindling resources, I see the ability of lawmakers to uphold rights shrink and dwindle too.
    
    Like I said at the start, verboten, and I’m fine being alone on this. Though would be good to have company.
    
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