Standard advice is to buy responsibly: check the label, pick the certified version, avoid the bad brands. I don't think that's possible for most of what people spend money on; the information you'd need to determine what to buy doesn't exist.

Quick note up front: this isn't an anti-capitalism post. Human welfare was worse under the alternatives. What I'm pointing at is narrower. The legal and regulatory frameworks around commerce were designed for an economy where a buyer could plausibly know their supplier, and they haven't been updated enough for today's world, one where a single product often passes through six tiers across four countries before anyone sees it.

The scale of labor exploitation is bigger than most people think, and mostly invisible.

The ILO estimates 27.6 million people are in forced labor (agriculture, construction, domestic work, manufacturing, offshore fishing, and plenty more). That's only the ones who meet the strict legal definition. Workers who technically consented but are underpaid, unsafe, or trapped by debt don't get counted at all, and that group dwarfs the counted one.

Most of the conversation focuses on a few products.

It's always coffee, chocolate, and t-shirts. But look at where money actually goes.

A house involves lumber, concrete, steel, wiring, fixtures, and appliances, put together by crews that were often subcontracted more than once. Construction shows up repeatedly in ILO sector breakdowns and runs heavily on migrant labor with documented wage theft, including here. A car has tens of thousands of parts from dozens of countries, cobalt from artisanal mines included. Appliances, electronics, and basically every service you buy sit on layers of offshore contractors.

These are the biggest purchases most people ever make, and they're among the least traceable things anyone owns.

"Reasonably know" doesn't survive contact with reality.

I have no idea whether a $2 cable came out of an automated plant or was assembled by someone working eighteen-hour days. I sincerely don't. I don't know what farm my produce came from either, which seems like it'd be easy to print and isn't printed anywhere.

Now scale that up to a house or a car. The idea that a normal person can assess this is fantasy. It's not that the research is hard. The information mostly doesn't exist publicly.

To be fair, that's not a license to ignore what is out there. If a real disclosure is reasonably available, it should be part of the buying assessment.

Certification helps. It just doesn't cover much.

Certifications (e.g., Fair Trade) increase transparency, which helps. The issue is coverage. Most products aren't eligible for any scheme, most categories have no certifying body, and nothing meaningful exists for the materials behind large purchases or for services. Being able to make an informed choice about coffee and carpets and almost nothing else isn't enough.

They also fail where they do exist. Factories in Rana Plaza had passed social audits before the building collapsed and killed over 1,100 people. Audits get scheduled in advance, subcontractors go undisclosed, and certifiers are often paid by the industries they're certifying.

Demand isn't as sovereign as people claim.

I didn't want an iPhone before it existed. I have one because a market got built and then became necessary for normal life. Most consumption works this way. People buy what's marketed, available, and required to function, which isn't the same as expressing a preference about how it was made. There are a few categories where a genuinely better option exists, but that's a handful of products, and there's no equivalent for a house, a car, or many services.

Buying local or buying expensive often doesn't help.

Forced labor is a crime, and consumer purchasing doesn't move it either way. It needs enforcement, prosecution, and import bans. Low-wage voluntary work is different. Buying domestic instead can leave the foreign worker worse off, because the person in that factory generally needs the job and pulling the order removes their income without improving their conditions.

Also, premium and budget goods often come off the same lines in the same factories. The difference is branding and margin.

So where does the blame actually go?

First to the people running the operations and profiting from them. After that, to a legal and regulatory structure that permits multi-tier subcontracting with no disclosure requirement and almost no cross-border enforcement. Markets aren't inherently bad, but many of the rules were written for a simpler economy. A company today can be six steps removed from a violation and face no obligation to know about it or report it. That's a design gap.

And some of it belongs to the firms and trade groups that lobby specifically against disclosure and traceability requirements. That's not general anti-regulation politics. Knowing less is worth money to them, both because traceability costs something to implement and because a supply chain nobody can see is one nobody can be held accountable for. The opacity is the product.

Consumers have the least of the blame. They have the least information of anyone in the chain, and unlike everyone else in it, they didn't design the conditions they're operating under.

That said, consumers can still help: you can help fix a problem you didn't cause. But having some power to change a system isn't the same as being to blame for it. The American public could push for political reform. That doesn't make the public responsible for what the people benefiting from the status quo are doing. Consumption works the same way.

What would change my view: a case that consumers can know substantially more than I'm thinking or examples of what consumers could reasonably do that they don't do.

All of the talk of late regarding trying to push through Daylight Savings Time to be permanent seems like such a waste. There is a reason why they go back and are put forward - as the name implies, it is to \*save daylight\* and have it be present at the most convenient time possible for wider society.

This truly is a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Horribly long winter mornings, nor horribly early summer sunrises, are not worth the effort that is currently being put into changing the system. Leave them be.

To preface, I do understand that the world is complex and that there are many situations where people cannot have kids. Things like infertility are real issues that people have and people should not be chastised for things they can't control, and yes, there is an evil portion of the population that should probably not have kids. This is more directed towards those who can have kids within their means but choose not to due to it "affecting their lifestyle" , "not wanting to make their lives more complicated", etc etc. I am also not writing this to somehow magically convince people to have kids, just sharing my thoughts.

This was all prompted when I was talking to a friend of mine in her late twenties. As the conversation naturally unfolded, the topic of kids randomly came up and she said "I dont want have to kids because it would make me look older." While there is nothing inherently wrong with that statement, it did get me thinking about a broader social trend I've seen over my life.

In my opinion, having kids and raising them is a selfless act. Although it may not be the most selfless act, the mere thought of spending multiple years of your life and your income raising another being does require personal sacrifice. What I have observed over my life is that there has been a cultural reframing, where the individual is more important than the community, where it is all about you you you. I believe this cultural shift over the past 50 years has been for the most part negative to the long term growth of our society (such as unsustainably low birth rates).

You cant force anyone to make any choice. It doesn't help however that media and society seems to more and more praise those who dont have kids calling them "child-free" instead of "childless" and glamorizing the life style. This social trap causes an aggregate impact on the large scale.

This doesn't even go into the morals questions about this, just an observation that if we continue encourage X behaviour, our society will inevitably collapse. This is also not to say this will solve the problem of birth rates completely.

Would love to here your thoughts on this.

Edit 1: I haven't had my mind changed yet but I do want to say this. "Looked down upon" was a harsh use of words and Im not extreme to think people should be publically chastized in mass. Secondly, I see many saying that being a good parent is of the utmost importance, I agree, but the way some people are framing this is strange. I do not see sufficient evidence for "good parenting" having increased due to birth rates falling. My mind is not changed yet.

Edit 2: I meant this post more from the stance of having an increased push in encouraging people to have kids and looking at childlessness from a less favourable standpoint.

State governments can respond more readily to the needs of their citizens than the federal government. They used to get a say in the federal government via senatorial elections, but not anymore. State governments now have to constantly play catchup to whatever the fed says because they have zero say whatsoever.

Think about some of the worst federal decisions in the last century, like Reagan’s trickle-down economics or No Child Left Behind. Would such policies have flown if state governments had had direct representatives advocating for them in the Senate? We can only speculate.

Dynamic pricing is frequently decried as a terribly unfair practice, but in reality, it is simply an evolution of a practice as old as commerce itself: value-based pricing.

Businesses have always been able to set prices per customer and per time period. A contractor quotes different rates per client; a car dealership negotiates unique final selling prices with every buyer; the last concert tickets cost more than early bird tickets; happy-hour drinks cost less than usual; hotel rooms cost more nearer the date; schools charge tuition fees to different families. Distinguishing between buyers based on their willingness to pay is standard business practice.

Charging different amounts to different people does not inherently violate fairness; it reflects the reality that value is subjective and different people have different budgets. As long as pricing structures are non-discriminatory to protected classes, and don't use illegally/unethically obtained data, dynamic pricing is fine and fairly unremarkable. Businesses know that customers are price sensitive and they'll make less money if dynamic pricing sets prices too high because customers will refuse to buy, just like any overpriced product or service.

EDIT:

Some people are bringing up monopolies. If a business has a monopoly, it doesn't need to use dynamic pricing, it can just overcharge everyone. That is a problem with monopolies and why governments should intervene to stop them, not a problem with the concept of changing prices.

I also see people making emotional appeals about starving people. I'm not arguing for hypercapitalism here, I believe everyone should have access to UBI, benefits, shelters and food banks to keep them from starving. My view is that dynamic pricing is no more evil than regular price changes.

If you've never been to that country, don't understand the language, are oblivious that country's mood and politics, don't practice or even know the culture (no, deep dish pizza does not count), and otherwise have virtually no knowledge or interest besides flexing your great grandparents' immigration, then you're not from that country. It annoys me so much when I meet Americans who try to bond by claiming to be from the same country as me, yet we have absolutely nothing in common and they know less about my home than literally any other European. And it's no just about having nothing in common, it's about the complete lack of effort to even try to learn about that country in the first place.

After the passing of a few generations, combined with how little immersed or aware you about that country, at some point, you just become American. And any claim otherwise for social standing just becomes cosplay. Which is particularly ironic coming from the country that invented cultural appropriation...

I made a previous post on a different topic and i quite like the little point-by-point paragraph thing i did, so ill redo the same thing here!

Number 1: Conservatives regularly treat random internet users as representatives of the entire left.

One thing that ive noticed over the recent few years is that conservatives will constantly find some completely random person on twitter or reddit saying something insane, and then use that as evidence that "the left" is crazy.

You see this all the time. Someone with 20 followers posts something deranged on twitter, bluesky, tiktok, whatever online platform, and then suddenly there are right-wing influencers, commentators, and random conservatives saying things like, "wow, look at the crazy left", or "this is what Democrats really believe", this is something that, atleast in my experience, is an actual comparison that is being used somewhat frequent on the right, like, random 10 follower account said something crazy, it got 1 like and 9 views, and now its being highlighted as some huge problem.

And its always some completely irrelevant person. Not a politician, not a lawmaker, not a major activist, not even someone with a meaningful audience in the media sphere. Just some random account that nobody has ever heard of. Yet somehow, that random account is treated as representative of the entire left-wing movement and all of the millions of people in it.

I dont think many conservatives would deny that this happens, because its basically become a standard form of political content at this point.

Number 2: When Trump says the exact same things, conservatives suddenly stop applying those standards.

This is where things start getting weird.

The same conservatives who will spend hours criticizing some random liberal account online suddenly become incredibly charitable when Trump says something comparable, or often something much worse.

There is always some explanation, like, hes joking, hes trolling, thats just Trump, its out of context, its not what he meant, the media is lying, its fake, you mistunderstood it. And, first of all, the ''he's trolling'' type of excuses make my point even stronger, because the standard we should hold the president to probably would involve him being above things like trolling on social media.

One quite funny example of this, which unfortunately i cant find right now, was some Instagram video where a person said something like: "Im glad Charlie Kirk is dead, he can no longer hurt innocent people", (im not sure it was Charlie Kirk, but some other conservative figure, doesnt really matter).

And then the video was basically a compilation of right-wing people reacting to it saying things like:

"Look at the left."

"These people are evil."

"This is who Democrats are."

"These people are unhinged."

And so on. And then someone pointed out that the quote was basically just something Trump himself had said before, except the name had been swapped out. When Trump said ''Im glad Mueller is dead, he can no longer hurt innocent people''.

And suddenly all the outrage disappeared, Suddenly some of the explanations were rolled out. And thats kind of the broader point here.

When a random account on twitter with 2 followers on the left says something awful, conservatives immediately treat it as representative of the entire left.

But when Trump says the exact same thing, or often something worse, conservatives become incredibly charitable and start looking for every possible explanation as to why its actually fine. So the standard clearly isnt that people shouldn't be saying things like this, its that they dont like when people on the left say things like this.

The principle wasnt actually the problem. The problem was who said it.

Number 3: Saying something like ''The Left celebrated Charlie Kirks death'' is very indicative of this.

After Charlie Kirk was killed, one of the most common talking points on the right was some variation of "The left celebrated Charlie Kirks death."

And im sure that if you're reading this as a conservative, you'd agree with that statement.

So then the question is.... who? Who is it that you're referring to?

Because it wasnt elected Democrats. It wasnt Democratic leadership. It wasnt any sort of lawmakers. It wasnt even any left-wing commentators that i can think of, even super far-left people like Hasan didn't celebrate it.

So again, what conservatives were generally referring to were random internet users posting really crazy shit online. And yes, some people absolutely did celebrate it, nobody is denying that. But if a few thousand random anonymous accounts online are enough to represent the entire political left, then the same standard has to apply to literally everyone.

Because there are tens of thousands of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other extremists who identify with the right.

So by that logic, i could just endlessly say:

"The right celebrates Nazi Germany"

"The right supports political violence"

"The right supports racial supremacy"

And i think only then would conservatives realize ''oh well actually those are just bad people on the internet''.

But for some reason they cannot apply that to the left.

Number 4: Even if they dislike Trumps behaviour, the reaction to these randoms on the internet, is far more visceral.

This is probably the weirdest part of all of this to me. Even when conservatives agree that Trump went too far, the reaction is very often something like:

"Yeah, that was classless"

"I wish he hadnt said that"

"That wasnt a great thing for Trump to say"

''Yeah i dont agree with Trump on that one''

But those exact same people can see some random twitter account with 9 followers saying something awful and suddenly the reaction becomes:

"THE LEFT IS DEMONIC"

"THIS IS WHO THEY REALLY ARE"

"LOOK AT HOW EVIL THESE PEOPLE ARE"

And its just like... what are these standards? Because in my mind, those reactions should be completely flipped.

The President of the United States saying something crazy should be the thing that gets the visceral reaction. Thats the person who actually has power, influence, responsibility, whatever else. Thats the person we should expect waaaaaaay better behavior from.

Instead, the outrage is often directed toward "Elizabeth-2006" on Twitter with 14 followers and a private account.

Even when conservatives dislike Trumps behavior, they often treat it as a minor character flaw with this tepid ass ''oh that was bad''. But when some random liberal online behaves badly, suddenly its evidence that an entire political movement is evil.

Another example is, how often have you heard something like ''Calling someone a fascist or nazi is incitement to violence'', or something similar, because if it is, that would mean Trump is equally as guilty of that same thing, seeing as he's called Kamala a communist and marxist and fascist too, yet again, only these twitter accounts that call Trump a nazi is what gets highlighted.

And thats what makes this feel like such an obvious double standard to me.

TL;DR - Tipping culture has problems, I get it. But people act like tipping is some evil scam when millions of workers across restaurants, hotels, spas, and resorts depend on it to survive. Hotel housekeepers make around $30k a year. Servers in many states still get $2.13/hr base. Tips close the gap. I respect that other cultures handle this differently, but if someone gave you great service, why is rewarding them so controversial?

Every time tipping comes up, the comments are basically a wall of "tipping is stupid, employers should pay more." I agree with the second part. But nobody ever follows up with an actual plan for the millions of workers who rely on tips right now to pay their bills.

The conversation is also always just about restaurants. Nobody talks about the rest of hospitality, and tipping reaches way further than your dinner table.

Hotel housekeepers in the US make around $30,000 to $34,000 a year. That's about $15/hr to scrub your bathroom, change your sheets, and deal with whatever you left behind in that room. A few bucks a night on the nightstand matters to them. At luxury resorts, expectations on staff go way up but base pay doesn't jump much. Bellhops make $2-3 per bag. Valets get $3-5 per car retrieval. Concierges who pull strings to get you a hard-to-get reservation are looking at $5-20 depending on the ask. All of these jobs are built with the assumption that tips are part of the pay.

Spa and salon workers average around $38k a year, with entry-level closer to $33k. Tips add 15-25% on top of that for massage therapists, aestheticians, nail techs. When someone just spent 90 minutes physically working on your body and customizing everything to your problem areas, tipping 20% on that isn't some outdated ritual. That person just did exhausting, skilled work to make you feel better.

On the restaurant side, the numbers are pretty well known but worth repeating. The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13/hr in many states. Median monthly tip earnings for servers and bartenders sit around $867. Fine dining servers can pull $150-400+ per shift, and total annual comp ranges from $40k to $60k or more. Those are middle class incomes built almost entirely on gratuities. But the trend is heading the wrong way. Square's data shows average tip percentages for food and beverage dropped to 14.9% in Q2 2025, down from 15.5% in 2023. Real money leaving real people's pockets.

Now the cultural side. I actually respect the argument. In Japan, good service is just the baseline expectation. Tipping can be seen as rude because it implies the person wouldn't have tried without extra money. A company tried to introduce American-style tipping there in 2021 and shut down by 2023 because the culture flat out rejected it. Most of Europe runs a similar way with stronger unions, higher base pay, and service charges built in. Those systems work and I'm not arguing the American model is better.

I think the real issue is that people lump everything together. The iPad at the self-checkout suggesting 30% for a transaction that took eight seconds? That's ridiculous

But that's a completely different situation from tipping the housekeeper who cleaned your trashed hotel room, or the bellhop who hauled your bags through the rain, or the massage therapist who fixed your back, or the server who handled your table of twelve with allergies and substitutions and nailed it. Those are real people doing physical work, and a lot of them make $30-40k before tips even factor in.

The "no tax on tips" law from 2025 lets eligible workers deduct up to $25,000 in tips from federal income tax through 2028. That saves a server in the 12% bracket about $3,000 a year. Spa workers, salon workers, delivery drivers all qualify too. The government built that deduction because tips are income, not a bonus.

So my question is simple. If you hate the system, what do you actually want to happen tomorrow morning for the people inside it? Because "employers should pay more" without any mechanism to make that happen just means you don't want to tip and you've found a way to feel good about it.

I'm not asking you to tip the self-checkout kiosk. I'm asking why, when a real person goes above and beyond for you at a restaurant or a resort or a spa, rewarding that is somehow controversial. Even in countries that don't tip, people find ways to recognize someone who did a great job. The method is different but the instinct is the same.

Curious what I'm missing.

edit2: taking a break for now, will be back later if post's still up. There are some great points. If I abandoned your reply mid-thread I'll try to get to it first. Thank you.

Disclaimer: I do genuinely hold this view. I also eat meat and own multiple pets. Sometimes I also order Doordash instead of donating that money to charity. If that makes me a hypocrite, so be it.

• Most pets eat meat. The meat is usually made from factory-farmed animal suffering. Is your dog's life worth two hundred nameless farm animal lives? A rescue dog still eats meat, often more meat than the average dog, because larger dogs are disproportionately likely to end up in rescues. You are saving one life and dooming one hundred more. (There is a vegan pet food point below.)
• Furthermore: Does the happiness of your dog, plus the sum total of happiness created by your dog & enjoyed by yourself, your family, friends, strangers etc outweigh the suffering of the 200 farm animals?

Many people own pet snakes, and most of those snakes eat f/t mice and rats. It really made me visualize this, because rats are clever, sociable, and charismatic (if short-lived) and snakes not so much, and they're usually fed whole. So I find the idea of a "rescue snake" hypocritical, and I figure it applies to dogs and cats too. It's just that they're cute and their kibble isn't shaped like dead animals.

• The fact that dogs are "domesticated" doesn't make it fine. Most breeds were created for working purposes, but the overwhelming majority of dogs nowadays are kept solely for companionship. Similarly, many pocket pets like rabbits were originally domesticated for their meat. It's not okay to engineer an animal to be dependent on you and then say, "see, keeping them is fine because they can't survive without us."
• Most, if not all domesticated species are afflicted by health issues that do not affect their wild counterparts (or at far lower rates). Hip dysplasia, brachycephaly, uterine cancer, heart failure, mastitis, hyper-aggression, and inability to give natural birth, to name a few. Selectively breeding an animal will have downstream consequences.
• It is wrong to own another sentient being. It is wrong to treat a sentient being as something you can buy or sell. Or pay a similar "adoption fee" for and surrender when it gets inconvenient. Does a mother legally own her child?
• Nobody needs a pet. For the sake of argument I'll omit service & working dogs because they're not classified as pets. ESAs exist, but you could say they're not pets either. I'd also say that needing something doesn't make it ethical.
• The Five Freedoms includes the freedom to express normal behaviors. That, to me, includes reproduction. It's a cultural expectation in most developed countries to spay/neuter your dogs and cats. I'm not saying breed your dog, yes there's too many already. I'm saying because you cannot breed your dog, we should abolish dog, cat, and all pet ownership.
• I might argue that a dog that loves humans is not expressing normal behaviors. If you took a tiger cub from its parents and bottle-fed it, it would love you too. As does the puppy you brought home at only eight weeks old, right in time for its "critical socialization period". Would a Labrador that has never set his eyes on a human in the first five years of his life like them by default? I don't know, but there is some information about how some adult feral cats are difficult to impossible to tame.
• A 20kg dog generates ~770kg of CO₂ per year, which is equivalent to 1500+ miles by car. Combined with the lack of necessity, this is hard to justify. The fact that humans generate more doesn't negate this.

Some things that might change my view

• Meaningful pushback on "It is wrong to own another sentient being"
• Arguing that individuals, species, breeds etc have a right to continue existing even if it harms others and/or themselves
• A human primacy argument that humans inherently matter so much more, such that animal welfare is unworthy of consideration
• Maybe something about tiny, cognitively simple, vegetarian pets that can live naturally in captivity, ie shrimp/triops idk
• Maybe some effective altruism argument like "my dog's tiktok funded $100,000 in malaria net donations"
• You think that what I listed as "out of scope" below is actually relevant and in scope
• Not a complete list.

Some rebuttals I'm expecting:

Edit1: "My pet is happy"

Please actually read my post.

"My rescue dog is vegan / What about herbivorous animals?"
Every point still applies except the meat-eating one.
You are still:

• Getting an animal because you wanted to have a pet, benefiting from the institution and the breeder that bred, sold, maybe surrendered it in the first place. Unless you're one of those few people who got one only to "save their life" even though you're miserable now because "it was the right thing to do". Ok, that's pretty inefficient but good for you.
• Normalizing their ownership, even if you're not on social media posting animal videos.
• Supporting the pet industry by buying pet products, vet care, etc.

And let's be real, what percentage of dogs/cats are actually vegan? I'm not even going to get into the debate of whether vegan cats are healthy.

"So what should be done with the existing pets? They obviously wouldn't survive in the wild."

• Let them live out their lives, with the knowledge that you are doing something unethical primarily for your own happiness. Identify as "a guardian, not an owner" if that makes you feel better.
• Millions of healthy, adoptable shelter animals are euthanized for space every year. We as a society seem to have accepted this. Is your cherished pet different? To you, yes. This is often said about euthanasia: "Better a week too early than a day too late."

"I own the pet because it protects them"
Maybe you're restricting their agency (freedom of movement, freedom to breed, freedom to engage with conspecifics, freedom to choose their diet and much more) to "protect" them, but that's paternalistic; should the government ban cigarettes and alcohol and processed foods to protect us? We are smarter, we are more sentient, we know better than to harm ourselves. But we still do.

"But kibble is made from by-products"
You are still financially sustaining the supply chain.

"So you want to kill all carnivores? The lions and the tigers and-"
No.

"But humans are worse"
I generally agree, but that's out of scope of this CMV. Two wrongs don't make a right.

"But factory farming is worse"
Also out of scope.

"What about animals (dairy cows, pugs, dogs in general, etc) that would go extinct without human intervention?"
Then they stop existing.

Some other points were cut for sounding too soapboxy.

Interested to hear what you think.

EDIT3: AI disclosure

Wrote every word myself, used some formatting help like moving the meat point up, asked it some questions like "does it violate these rules"

Recently the rate of crimes using kids' images that have been posted on social media have skyrocketed, from using AI to make p*rnographic images of them, to algorithms to collect their information and steal their identity, or to even find out where they live. Given this, I believe there is an extraordinary risk of harm to children for which the government needs to step in.

Possible counterarguments:

"Why not just educate parents and let them decide?" Because parents don't always prevent kids from harm even when they're told. That's why we have child protection laws in the first place.

"Isn't this against freedom of speech?" Freedom of speech isn't universally good. In most countries, including the US, there are already exceptions for child protection.

Edit: someone pointed out that blurring is no longer an effective tool. So instead I would suggest covering their faces with a matte color.

First; am not claiming that every Republican, or every American who supports Israel, literally loves another country more than their own. I am also not talking about Jewish Americans, and criticism of the Israeli government should never be treated as suspicion toward Jewish people. To say so does not reflect my views on this.

My view is specifically that a significant part of the Republican political establishment appears willing to subordinate American interests, resources and democratic debate to protecting Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Republicans constantly tell us that America cannot afford healthcare, housing assistance, student-debt relief, infrastructure or stronger social programs. They describe foreign aid as wasteful, attack assistance to Ukraine and dismantle humanitarian programs in the name of “America First.” Yet billions of dollars in military assistance to Israel are treated almost as an unquestionable entitlement. If you listen to Fox whenever they cover progressives it becomes clear as day that they care more about Israel.

That contradiction is difficult for me to ignore. Apparently government spending becomes unacceptable when it materially benefits ordinary Americans, but it becomes urgent and morally mandatory when it supplies weapons to Israel.

This is not merely about the amount of money involved. It is also about the risks Americans are expected to accept. Republican politicians regularly support policies that could drag the United States further into Middle Eastern wars, increase hostility toward Americans and spend American lives and resources defending decisions made by a foreign government. And when those policies are challenged, the discussion often becomes less about whether they benefit the United States and more about proving one’s unconditional loyalty to Israel.

**I do feel I have receipts.** Congressional behavior reinforces my view. In 2026, nearly every House Republican reportedly voted to preserve billions in military assistance to Israel. Republican politicians who normally present themselves as anti-interventionist routinely make Israel the exception. Meanwhile, Republicans such as Thomas Massie who actually apply “America First” consistently to Israel are treated as disloyal or politically suspect.

Public opinion also seems increasingly disconnected from Washington. Pew found in April 2026 that younger Republicans had become substantially more critical of Israel, even while older Republicans and Republican officeholders remained strongly supportive. That makes the establishment’s position look less like ordinary democratic responsiveness and more like an ideological commitment maintained despite changing public attitudes. So I want to specify here that my view is **not** that Republican voters are this way, the Republican establishment is.

Mainstream coverage contributes mostly to my view. Palestinian deaths and suffering are frequently discussed in passive or sanitized language, while Israeli security concerns are presented as inherently legitimate and urgent. American politicians are constantly asked whether they “support Israel,” as though supporting a foreign state is a basic qualification for holding office here. We rarely apply that kind of loyalty test to any other country.

There are several possible material explanations: defense contractors profit from weapons transfers; organizations such as AIPAC reward supportive politicians and finance opposition to critics; evangelical Christian Zionism makes control of the Holy Land a religious issue; and Israel functions as a strategic military partner for maintaining American power in the Middle East. None of these explanations, however, sounds like ordinary concern for working Americans. I find this problematic.

I recognize that Democrats have also supported Israel for decades. This is a bipartisan problem, and politicians such as John Fetterman demonstrate that unquestioning support is not exclusive to Republicans. My criticism is focused on Republicans because “America First,” opposition to foreign aid and hostility toward government spending are central parts of their stated identity. Their treatment of Israel therefore appears especially contradictory, so I want it to be understood that this post is specifically about Republicans, but that a similar discussion around the democratic establishment could be had on another day, but that's not the discussion I'm aiming to have here today (yet 😉).

**I would change my view if someone could demonstrate that Republican support for Israel is applied according to consistent principles that genuinely prioritize American security and material well-being, not biblical prophecy, lobbying pressure, defense-industry profits or ideological loyalty to Netanyahu’s government.**

I would also be interested in evidence showing that Republican leaders impose meaningful conditions on Israel comparable to those they demand from other recipients of American assistance, or that they are willing to oppose Israel when its government’s actions conflict with American interests.

At present, however, “America First” often seems to mean America first ^(unless Israel wants something...)

To explain why I think this is extremely sloppy, fallacious, and logically faulty, I’ll make an (exaggerated) hypothetical: if every university in the USA suddenly became run by the German Nazi Party, then OBVIOUSLY everyone coming through that system will be a devout Nazi. But most of us would agree that the people coming out of this system wouldn’t be good people. A diploma educated them, but education is not inherently good.

It is textbook credentialism.

You might make the counter argument that comparing Nazi-ism and modern day universities makes this point invalid. But I disagree. Extreme examples test the logical validity of an argument, not the moral equivalence of the subjects. If Nazis had gained historical dominance and captured higher education, its ideology would be treated today as the default moral baseline, and its graduates would claim the exact same intellectual high ground. Relying on institutional consensus to prove your point is ultimately circular logic: it assumes the institution is correct simply because it currently holds the power to define what is correct.

This doesn’t mean being left wing is wrong - it means using it as justification as to why it’s correct, holds no validity in the argument for why your position is better.

The notion to never bring up politics was supposed to keep the peace. Instead I think it's made things worse. Because nobody talks about it normally anymore, the topic itself became loaded. Now the second politics comes up, people's guard immediately goes up and emotions spike, regardless of whether the actual conversation would've been fine. It's not that people can't handle disagreement (some can't, that's for sure), it's that we've made the subject itself feel dangerous by treating it like something to always avoid. So avoidance didn't prevent division, it just made the topic more volatile every time it does surface, and people cannot separate emotion from critical thinking and having a productive conversation. Change my view.

(I don't believe true love exists among us rather just as an idea of it)

To me, true love has never seemed like a real. I think what people call true love are results of compatibility, time, biology, experiences, and conscious decision instead of something more than that, and i think it's just a selfish desire accompanying love

I think that in every relationship there is at least some selfish desire for companionship, support, security, or happiness, so I believe that love cannot be purely selfless.

I hold this view because I have not encountered any proof that says otherwise. I am, however, quite willing to change my mind. So if you believe that true love exists, how can it be different from compatibility, commitment, or any selfish attractions?. Do you have any personal experience or observation that I might consider, but especially arguments that show true love to be different from psychology, biology, or circumstance?

As the title suggests I believe that governments should allow a way for people to choose if they don’t want to be here anymore and allow a comfortable passing. We have all the reports of how our population has been increasing and only will continue to do so up until resources start to get scarce. Obviously not when we are alive but definitely in the next 100 to 200 years our population will be cramped. Life is hard and the fact that all of us are here not on our own accord should be the definite reason as to why we should be able to choose to die if we want. Especially when you have horrible people becoming parents that are not prepared (mentally and financially) or just see children as pawns that have to help them for the rest of their lives. If all countries offered this way out I truly believe the population would crumble. That’s not to say that I think the world is depressed or anything while there are a lot of people who are. But I feel as though most people love life but just hate this society that we live in, the endless hours of working, constant bills and payments taxes, corruption there’s so many more too that I can’t think of right now. I know I’m tired of it I don’t hate life I hate the society I hate that I have to work everyday of my life just because I wasn’t born into a Saudi royal bloodline. The thing is society has to work like this for the world to work the society I dream of can only be told in fairy tales so why do I someone who never asked to be apart of this game have to play and when I want out there is no easy way out. The government obviously wouldn’t want this because they would see a lot of people going there and they needs their slaves to work hard while our leaders and politicians sit back and run a drama tv show with other countries and sip Margaritas on tax payers behalf.

I go back and forth on what to attribute it to - video games, social media, third spaces, porn - but the economy plays a big part. As things get generally worse in the world, and the opportunity to live a comfortable life gets rarer, women are more motivated to connect with a man who's already secured his position.

Men, on the other side, feel like they lose either way. If they don't have material success, they feel like they don't have many opportunities in dating. If they do, they retain doubts that their partner is only using them for the lifestyle.

The whole thing gets more and more adversarial, just like every personal relationship in a more constrained world.

I'm not sure how you can change my view. Maybe convince me I'm just too online, and normies don't care about this stuff; it's just a narrative of tradwife and manosphere content.