I disagree that life requires a narrow set of conditions to continue. What I believe is the case is that life requires specific conditions to begin, but once it exists, it is incredibly resilient. There are extremophiles which could reasonably survive in the vacuum of space, and from a more anthropocentric perspective, humans have proven ourselves to be remarkably resilient in the face of climatic tests. Sure, the most inhospitable of earth conditions is a paradise in comparison to something like Mars as it exists now, but we adapted to those when the height of technology was a flint knapped hand-axe. It’s safe to say that the technological aspect of humanity has come a long way, and our ability to survive in and adapt to the conditions of bodies other than earth improves steadily day by day as the wheel of technology turns ever-faster (to say nothing of outright space habitats, which we could absolutely reasonably build with our current understanding of physics). I don’t mean this as a glorification of human industry; rather, I mean to say that ingenuity, adaptability, and tenacity are fundamental characteristics of our species - it’s why we’re here today.

I will also note that there’s no guarantee that there aren’t habitable worlds in other solar systems, and no reason to assume that they couldn’t be found. Even within our solar system, there are planets which, with sufficient effort, could feasibly be colonized near to our current tech level (looking at you, Venus. I know Mars gets all the attention but you’re my one true love).

And, indeed, I wonder if you’ve proven the fundamental point yourself with your observation on organization and long term planning. After all, is it perhaps possible that the very reason we have never demonstrated that level of resource management in our modern, industrial world is itself capitalism? Such a duplicative, wasteful structure is fundamentally inefficient, and more to the point, is fundamentally at odds with the communalist nature of humanity. We are a species which, historically, shares, and just the mere fact that we have convinced ourselves that selfishness is in our nature does not make it true. Additionally, centuries of planning becomes a lot more reasonable when humans reach the point of living for centuries, which is a prospect that I think a lot of people ignore the (relatively speaking) imminent nature of.

All that is to say: we are a species of firsts, and typically when we are met with a survival challenge on a physiological level, we conquer that with technology. Clothing, fire, tools, and planning allowed us to conquer the arctic despite a body plan which is adapted for equatorial living, why should we assume we won’t also eventually rise to this technical challenge in the long term? I have no idea what that intermediary period will look like (except that it will likely be, at minimum, equally unpleasant for us as it is at present), but if history shows us anything it’s that we eventually pull through. Humanity tried to migrate out of Africa several times before it stuck, populations died out, and we find fossil remains which have genomes entirely unrelated to anyone not from Africa, but the notable thing is that we kept on trying anyways.

We’re just stubborn like that.

Do we think that’s actually true, though? Life, all life, has a tendency to spread out when a niche is open in a new environment which it can fill, and there’s nothing shown there that isn’t technically within the bounds of humanity. Before capitalism, before humans were even Homo sapiens, we were already migrating out of Africa and into Eurasia. The drive to explore is, in my opinion, deeply human, and nothing says that the model of that exploration or expansion needs to be capitalistic. We wouldn’t have colonized the world in prehistory if it did.

At this point it’d be faster to list what isn’t wrong.

Again, you’re being reductive and oversimplifying an issue that is more complex than killing and robbing a neighbor. Remember, veterans are (at least socially) widely celebrated in American culture, and the more morally abhorrent things the US military participated (and continues to participate) in are often glossed over or outright ignored by our education system. It is easy to immediately recognize murdering your neighbor for their stuff as inherently wrong, but it is much harder to do so when you may not even realize what the military entails at the time of joining, and by the time you realize what you’re complicit in (likely at the point of active duty/in your first deployment) there is no real recourse to leave unless higher command decides that they are willing to let you go, and they’re generally pretty resistant to that. You can always take the conscientious objector route, but they generally make that quite difficult, and the burden of proof is on you to show them that you truly believe this, so it’s likely that feet will be dragged and you’ll just get moved to light duty in the (very long) meantime. Even then, denials of discharge on these grounds are common. Once you take that oath, once you get assigned your first deployment, there is essentially no going back unless higher command allows it until your term of service is done. If, then, you decide to force the issue by intentionally breaking rules, you’d be likely to get an “Other-Than-Honorable Discharge”, which would show up on your record of for any government job applications going forward and would be visible as a red flag if an employer (any employer) chose to request records from your time of service. Additionally, you would lose out on the GI Bill, VA benefits, Healthcare benefits, etc., and would have to deal with social stigma for having not finished your term of service. All of that is doable, certainly, there’s nothing there that is the end of the world, but the system is configured to make leaving very painful, be that in a social, financial, or physical sense.

All of that also ignores that not everything the US military does is universally evil. Certainly, it’s responsible for immense human suffering around the globe, both throughout history and into the present. I won’t argue with you on that, because such a position is inarguable. I ask, however, if that same level of condemnation is warranted for a logistics officer whose job is to coordinate supply transfer to Ukraine, for an intelligence officer who collates and synthesizes information on Russian movements to Ukraine and the broader NATO alliance, or for an analyst offering recommendations to US Asia Pacific allies on how to better deter potential regional aggressors? Moving even one degree further away, is the same condemnation warranted of the Coast Guard? Of EOD? Of field medics?

Look, I can understand your view, certainly. I said so myself previously when I mentioned that they are complicit simply by being part of the broader US military apparatus, however I don’t think the level of complicity is the same, and most legal systems worldwide would agree. After all, a distinction is made legally between murder and manslaughter based on intent, foreknowledge, and degree of participation, with even that often being separated further by degrees of severity, so why shouldn’t people who may have joined the military not knowing the truth of what it was they were getting into (who may not even serve outside of US borders or in an active combat role at all) be given the same consideration?

Let’s not act like joining the military is a decision that exists in a vacuum (at least in the US). Many people (typically targeted young for recruitment in or straight out of highschool, primed on US propaganda by our education system) in the military are in it because that is the only option they have if they want to get any kind of higher education without putting themselves into ruinous debt in the process. Now, the system is absolutely configured to encourage that on purpose, but it is, in my opinion, reductive to universally blame the soldiers themselves rather than the system that forced many of them down this path, especially when there are a lot more roles in the military than being a trigger puller, even insofar as active combat is concerned. Pararescue is one example that is specifically mentioned in this article. Sure, you could argue that they are still supporting the US military apparatus, and are thus complicit, but the complicity is not equal across the board.

Plus, I’d rather that the people who have a conscience remain in the military at the moment. Otherwise, we risk all of the people who might potentially impede the current trend of domestic usage of the US armed forces leaving said forces, with only the supporters of fascism remaining. Not a great outcome, though I’ll admit that the hope of a significant mass of conscientious objectors impeding operations is, in all likelihood, cope on my part. The obedience to hierarchy that the military trains into soldiers is incredibly hard to truly break.

SpaceX lifts more raw tonnage into orbit than all other agencies and private organizations combined iirc, and directly controls an ever-increasing proportion of US government space-based assets, to say nothing of Starlink. Tesla, while sales have dropped, has not really seen a corresponding sustained drop in stock price (where most of his corresponding net worth from Tesla is actually located) in the meantime, though we will see if that can be sustained long term (I, for one, hope it falls off a goddamn cliff). As for your other point, Twitter (now X) and Grok by extension are, frankly, not a major factor in his worth, when assessed next to those other factors.

Correct. When we hear concerns about a declining population, the concern (typically) isn’t that a population should always be rising, or even that it shouldn’t shrink, it’s more about the long-term economic stability of the age distribution of a population within the demographic pyramid. If your demography skews significantly older, you’re going to have fewer working age people supporting your economy and more post-retirement age people needing to be supported. This can do double damage to government revenue in particular, as they will see a simultaneous decrease in tax income and an increase in pension payouts, and this can lead to a sharp contraction in the available share of the budget for all of the other government priorities.

It’s a bit ironic in this case, as this is pretty common in developed economies, and typically the way you would offset this is via immigration, as that allows you to tailor your requirements to exactly what you need to balance your demography, and so anti-immigration sentiment is only likely to cause a more severe spiral.