The progressive and romantic, the brilliant Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), pompously proclaimed: "Is it possible that our parents, while transmitting to us the capabilities of their physical constitution, did not also transmit to us understanding, spiritual energy, and morality?"

Condorcet, of course, is absolutely right. Of course, they did transmit. But one small clarification is required: our "parents" were not only humans.
Moreover, they were predominantly non-humans.

Our "parents," beginning with the theropoda of the Paleozoic, were an impressive evolutionary chain of creatures whose brains "adaptively" developed in conditions where the strength and fullness of aggression were almost everything, and "other" qualities were completely superfluous.

This conclusion allows us to put an end to the question of the "depravity" of man and his "guilt," as demonstrated by his "fixed history." It is clear that homo could not be any different; he did not have the slightest neurophysiological capacity for this.
#atheism #biology

Picture this: October 2010, a black Toyota Prius pulls up to some venture capitalists in San Francisco. Two guys named Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp just pitched an app that lets you summon rides with your phone. The VCs probably thought "cute tech toy for rich millennials."

Meanwhile, across the country in New York City, taxi medallions were trading for $1.3 million each. These little metal plates had appreciated faster than Manhattan real estate for decades (because the city artificially capped them at 13,237 medallions since the 1930s). Immigrant drivers mortgaged their entire lives to buy these things, treating them like retirement accounts. Fleet owners sat on medallion portfolios worth hundreds of millions.

The medallion system started during the Great Depression when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia decided too many taxis were "flooding" the streets. Classic government solution: create artificial scarcity, call it public safety. For eighty years, this cartel enriched medallion owners while screwing over riders who couldn't hail cabs in outer boroughs and drivers who paid usurious lease fees.

Then Uber scaled. By 2014, medallion values crashed to $870,000. By 2018? Try $200,000. Hundreds of drivers declared bankruptcy. The Taxi Workers Alliance started organizing suicide prevention workshops because medallion debt was literally killing people. Meanwhile, you could finally get a ride in Brooklyn at 2 AM without bribing a dispatcher.

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian