I'm disengaging.

Omg this is the most redditor argument I've seen off reddit. No one likes a pedant.

Also, they do state they would pay off their mortgage, so not only are you a pedant but also a wrong one at that.

If you started with $100M, you definitely could buy yourself a house and car before donating the rest. Hell, you could buy it out of the $2M and still be better off than most folks.

Ah, thanks for the info. That's actually what I suspect is happening with the new fractional shares thing, but the brokerage is the one retaining control.

I do understand that is what it says on the tin. I'm not sure how it works in practice, and I have real hesitation to take any powers-that-be at their word. Probably comes from the trauma of growing up in a "free" "democracy" and then finding out it is all bullshit and lies. I also have actual, material criticisms of the USSR and the PRC, but before engaging with those more, I want to develop my understanding of theory from primary sources.

in the end

He started there

I know Hitler had Volkswagen created by (Porche iirc) to be the people's vehicle in early Nazi germany. Folks needed something to drive on the autobahn and the slaves needed something to build.

Just take it!

I liked that it was a transparent critique of capitalism...but it encourages you to unite the nice liberals and anarchists on the second planet and turn off power to the co-op on the first planet for the best ending so...meh? It was better than most things at critiquing work culture and advertising but its so hamfisted and lacks focus, and in the end you don't bring about an anarchic or socialist state. New Vegas was a better critique of current America imo. Still, I enjoyed my time with it, 6.5/10.

So, LeGuin is certainly not a utilitarian. She claims to be a Taoist, which I know little about, but the story's morality is almost Kantian. No suffering is morally permissible, there is no great balance. But I believe the story is trying to state that "This idealized world with only one suffering and all else reaping the benefits is still unethical, how much less is our world."

By the by, I am a utilitarian and can see the story as both a allegory in which I appreciate its message, and as a fiction where I'd choose this world over any realistic possibility.

So, the entire story is poignant and heartbreaking, and its a poor reflection on our world that we have more people in the basement than in the utopia and we still can't be happy. I wish the people didn't walk away though, that seems tantamount to suicide when in reality we can't simply leave the city, I wish they saved the child or died trying. But, one part stands separate from the rest to me and I'd like to talk about it on its own:

"They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."

I think this is a condemnation of so much #deep media, with the fetishization of suffering and pain. I think the reason I love shows like She-Ra and Kipo is their resolve to hope, to have characters be joyful and loving and that not be naïve. In Kipo it is even shown that loving your enemy won't always work, but it is always worth the effort. No one is made stronger by their suffering, no one is helped by hate, it is so uplifting. Then I remember ASoIaF and how even the reader's hopes and wants were used as ammunition to show just how mean and bad the world is. I want more media that dares to hope, to be happy and less grimdark.

Pithy, I like it.