I think this is moreso the case of how economics works. Inflation is a one way street because deflation is so much worse. The Great Depression saw -7% deflation.

The fact that it kills so many is a marketing tool. It's viewed as the "strongest" high and the people who die just "didn't know their limit" unlike the user.

Where are those houses? Nowhere anyone wants to live

Death penalty litigation is always more expensive than just jail.

“Rather than teasing apart who, what, or when is to blame, this report shows that the post-9/11 wars are implicated in many kinds of deaths, making clear that the impacts of war’s ongoing violence are so vast and complex that they are unquantifiable.”

Did this writer or anyone in this thread actually read the paper?

I think there is going to be a greater push for KYC for social media as we are going to soon be inundated with comments and online activity by bots that is indistinguishable from humans and hyper taylored to its audience. All the stuff Russia pulled with election interference is going to be child’s play.

There is also going to be an explosion of content. The same recipe page that took a human a day or two to create will be made in a second. Billions of recipe pages, billions of sports blogs, billions of comments…

Downfall of the West relative to who? The whole world is impacted by climate change and the West is best positioned to manage its effects.