Saint Benedict Joseph Labre followed a similar path. Though he was from a wealthy family, he strove to live a monastic life. When he was turned down twice, he resorted to becoming a homeless pilgrim who traveled between European holy sites until he died of starvation. Notably, though, he was said to avoid people who were too fond of him and practically sought out opportunities to be downtrodden.

Capitalism isn’t the problem. Any economy run by human beings is going to have cronyism.

My point is that the described scenario - “all money not absolutely required for existence is in the hands of the bourgeoisie” - hasn’t happened under free market systems as often as it has in communist/“state capitalist” countries like the Soviet Union.

I’m sorry I got you mixed up with the other person. But I find it interesting they haven’t answered that question yet.

Here’s the article. According to the story, there were two people panhandling and using drugs; they were asked to leave. One threw a rock at the employee’s car window, shattering it, and then threatened to shoot him. The video also says the person was shot because he lunged at the employee. I hope the truth comes out and the situation is handled appropriately.

That sounds an awful lot like an authoritarian state seizing control of the economy (for example, the Soviet Union). That most certainly didn’t happen through free market forces.

And I notice you still haven’t answered my question. Why is that? I think it would be pretty simple to answer, wouldn’t it? (Edit: got the wrong username)

We’re competing for people’s cash. If we do a good job at getting it, we get more of it. But how do you define “win”?

Also, please answer my question. If there is no competition, then how do you have anything other than a monopoly?

Preface: If all you want is to get a simple script/program going that will more or less work for your purposes, then I understand using AI to make it. But doing much more than this with it will not help you.

If you want to actually learn to code, then using AI to write code for you is a crutch. It’s like trying to learn how to write an essay by having ChatGPT write the essays for you. If you want to use an API in your code, then you’re setting yourself up for greater failure the more you depend on AI.

Case in point: if you want to make a module or script for Foundry VTT, then they explicitly tell you not to use AI, partly because the models available online have outdated information. In fact, training AI on their documentation is explicitly against the terms of service.

Even if you do this and avoid losing your license, you run a significant risk of getting unusable code because the AI hallucinated a function or method that doesn’t actually exist. You will likely wind up spending more time scouting the documents for what you actually want to do than if you’d just done it yourself to begin with.

And if the code works perfectly now, there’s no guarantee that it will work forever, or even in the medium term. The software and API receive updates regularly. If you don’t know how to read the docs and write the code you need, you’re screwed when something inevitably gets deprecated and removed. The more you depend on AI to write it for you, the less capable you’ll be of debugging it down the line.

This begs the question: why would you do any of this if you wanted to make something using an API?

If we don’t have competition, how will that be anything other than monopoly?

Is it wrong to hope for the Mexican government to do the right thing?

Lord have mercy. I hope the parish gets a new priest soon and justice is brought to his killers.

The APRS website hasn’t even started using HTTPS yet.

The Russian Orthodox Church is basically a propaganda arm of the Russian government. The army has its own personal cathedral and Patriarch Kirill (“former” KGB asset, by the way) describes the invasion of Ukraine as a holy war.

Judge Christy Craig ruled that Ayala was incompetent and he is being sent to Lake’s Crossing Center, a maximum security psychiatric facility located in Sparks.

Some people are simply too dangerous to be left in society, but unable to stand trial. That’s why we have solutions like this.

We’re naturally inquisitive creatures, though. That’s how we got here, by asking questions that matter to us. Why should we handwave away the most important question of all time? Would you be satisfied if the answer to every important scientific and philosophical question was “It doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it”?

Morality is not at all self-evident. “Basic empathy” is such a vague concept that it can be turned in any number of ways. Is it more empathetic to force someone to be born against their will and persist in this world full of suffering, or to kill them before they’re born so they never have to suffer? Ask a hundred people a list of everything “basic empathy” covers, and you’d get a hundred different answers. As for the religious caricatures you mention, of the hundreds of religious people I know, none of them “want to do a bunch of heinous things were it not for the idea of hell.” They want to do good things, instead, out of love for the Lord who created them. Based on articles like the one above, though, people refusing to believe that morality is imposed makes them come off as wanting to do whatever they want and then retroactively rewrite their morality to make it seem like they’re doing good things. Look at any 20th-century dictatorship and you’ll see what I mean.

And your lack of knowledge of the world does not preclude the existence of a god.

First, people doing wrong punish themselves in the act. Those acts are toxic to the soul. God barely needs to lift a finger there. Second, what would you rather have happen: people get punished for doing wrong, or not? If the first, you need free choice; if the second, then you either have slavery or no justice at all.

There is artistic freedom, but the fact remains that there are moral rights and wrongs. Simply because I can imagine something doesn’t mean it’s possible, you only need to look at the Penrose stairs to know this. Not even God can do logically impossible things, like making square circles.

God is the only sensible explanation of the creation of the universe and morality. Without him, nothing makes sense at all.

If God isn’t real, where did the universe come from?

On what basis?

Sure. If God made us so we could never do anything wrong, we would be lower than slaves - we’d be programmed robots. It seems that God would rather have people who are able to choose to do good or wrong rather than be forced to do only good. Would you rather be free to choose to do right - be free - or would you rather be unable to do anything wrong ever - be a slave/robot?

Are you asking why evil exists? It’s because either we have evil in the world, or every human being is a slave. Would you rather be free, or a slave?