doylio

It's anti-tech propaganda. The same is happening with crypto. Certain groups don't like it, so they try to convince the public that it is bad for the environment so it will be banned

This isn't a good situation, but I also don't like the idea that people should be banned from using energy how they want to. One could also make the case that video games or vibrators are not "valuable" uses of energy, but if the user paid for it, they should be allowed to use it.

Instead of moralizing we should enact a tax on carbon (like we have in Canada) equal to the amount of money it would take to remove that carbon. AI and crypto (& xboxes, vibrators, etc) would still exist, but only at levels where they are profitable in this environment.

This is a bit of a fallacy. In a normal market, the rent for a home is less than the costs of home ownership (mortgage + maintenance + taxes) and that saved money can be used to purchase other assets.

Until the real estate mania of the last few years, if you followed this strategy, you would not be any worse off than the person who bought their home.

I personally would much rather have equity in more fungible assets than a home. Owning a home ties you to a specific location, and can't easily be sold in an emergency. Plus it's not a very diverse portfolio if most of you wealth is in a single property

Humanity:

It would be very stupid to set up a system where you have to give the porn site your ID. Better to just have an attestation that this user is over 18 years old.

There even ways to do this without the government knowing which site you visited with zero knowledge cryptography. But that would probably require everyone to get a Yubi key or equivalent, which might be hard to swallow

Governments already have systems to handle citizen IDs. They're not perfect, and fake ones do get created, but they're good enough. All that is needed is to connect that system to a UBI key or other device. Then websites could use cryptographic tools (signatures, ZK-SNARKS, etc) to verify that someone is over 18 without revealing their identity

I fear internet ID is coming whether we like it or not. AI powered bots will pass all captchas and be indistinguishable from humans. The open, pseudonymous internet cannot survive under those conditions. You could spend all day without seeing a comment by a real human.

I suspect some of the negativity comes from porn users who are in denial

It seems to me much more likely that the porn industry is financing studies that say there is nothing wrong with porn use. The means and motive make a lot more sense going in that direction, as they don't want to be seen as the new cigarettes

I agree some are problematic. The first one is based on brain scans, which is hard to refute. And there are many more like it

The porn industry has a vested interest in suppressing this, and billions of dollars to spend muddying the waters.

There are many studies that indicate porn use can negatively affect your brain, sexual performance, and pro-social behaviour.

Porn linked to decreased grey matter

Porn addiction linked to lower executive functioning

Porn linked to negative social behaviour

Meta analysis on research into adolescents porn use discusses a range of negative outcomes such as anxiety, suicidal ideation, social isolation, and academic disengagement

I'm not really sure this law will "solve" the problem, or if it's a good solution to the problem. But there are real, negative outcomes of internet porn

The only developed country that doesn't seem to have a housing crisis right now is Japan. After their real estate market collapsed in the 90s, they instituted a number of reforms to make housing less attractive as an investment vehicle. Now housing there tends to depreciate over time, not appreciate. Consequently, it's viewed not as an investment but as a consumer product, much like buying a car, and there is competition that brings costs down.

I think this is the sensible approach we need to follow in the rest of the developed world, but I don't think it's not going to be politically feasible until a lot of homeowners feel a lot of pain and give up on the idea of housing as an investment