I think it goes both ways. Women obviously do prefer partners who are successful, higher in socioeconomic hierarchy. Yet not being able to find a partner may lower one's self-esteem, which in turn may reduce the likelihood of doing things that increase chances of socioeconomic success.
I mean, advancing in life generally requires leaving your comfort-zone, but that may be hard if you lack confidence.
I think in this context it's not about toxic masculinity, but simply biology. We're merely animals with big brains, and most individual animals have a deep desire to reproduce. So it's not exactly weird that historically everywhere in the world young men unable to find a partner have been frustrated and a source of social problems, especially as with men troubles finding a partner tend to correlate with lower socio-economic status in general.
Owning a share of the building has its own issues as well though. If your neighbours suck and don't care about maintaining the building adequately, then you're basically out of luck. Even worse, at least here in Finland some older apartment buildings in smaller cities are worth too little to get funding from bank for larger renovations, effectively making them impossible to do unless every tenant is capable and willing of getting a personal loan.
I will never buy an apartment from reasons mentioned above. Just way too risky, at least with my own house it would be up to me what gets done and what doesn't.
Freehold is one thing on a block of flats. The poor people who got conned into buying a house on a freehold basis where the legal protection for rent increases doesn't apply. That is a different matter.
The difference is that the US, EU and UK are highly individualistic democracies, where governments are really weak at enforcing anything. It's no surprise that they suck at handling disease compared to societies with effective authoritarian governance.
Individuals who don't care exist everywhere, but in China government can force them to do the right thing. In the West it can't do that easily. I guess it's the price of individual freedoms.
Right to repair or upgrade may not make sense for all appliances, but for some it definitely does. For example, early 2010's Macbook Pro's remain perfectly usable when upgraded with SSD and more RAM, while more modern ones don't allow any upgrade whatsoever and will become obsolete much faster. For many electronic devices repairability is easy to implement, at least for a little extra cost, and is certainly more environmentally friendly than recycling them.
So, I think for many classes of products right to repair makes sense, and should be implemented even if it raises the cost of buying a new device, since the boost in second-hand options will eventually be good for people who don't have so much money.
Recycling is good too, but not as good using a device longer since not all can be recycled, and the process typically requires energy.
Exactly. Going full vegan requires real effort to get enough of all nutrients you need. A vegetable-heavy diet with little animal products on the other hand easily gives you everything, without any vitamin pills, and reduces your carbon footprint almost as much. It's also psychologically easier as you can still enjoy good steak or whatever you like every now and then.
I highly recommend chickpeas and fava beans in particular. Much better for stomach than kidney beans, and perfect for many kinds of rice and pasta dishes. Fava beans are also very easy to grow outside in most climates if you're into gardening and have the space.
> Exactly. Going full vegan requires real effort to get enough of all nutrients you need.
This is really not true with the possible exception of iron, which you can mitigate by eating a lot of citrus (this helps with absorption; plants have lots of iron, but heme iron has much greater bio-availability).
I am not vegan since I eat dairy and eggs still, however this is purely because I enjoy them and not for any particular dietary reason. I allow myself these luxuries while understanding that's what they are: luxuries, not requirements. We are all human, after all, and we can't all be monks who optimize every behavior. I think it's important to be honest about that and truthful about our motivations when we decide to eat animal products, because it is really not by necessity (at least, not in the western world, where plant-based alternatives are affordable and readily purchased).
If everybody ate mostly soy and legumes it would solve a lot of problems, even if they still have a steak or cheese every now and then. But they don't need to have that steak or cheese to be healthy :)
I've been a vegetarian and sometime vegan for coming up to 25 years now, and I fully agree. If people cut down on meat just so they could use that money towards a couple of really good pieces of meat in the week, not only would that cut their meat consumption it would also improve their enjoyment of food, let alone all the other benefits.
Conventional beekeepers aim to harvest the maximum amount of honey, with high honey yields being viewed as a mark of success. When farmers remove honey from a hive, they replace it with a sugar substitute which is significantly worse for the bees’ health since it lacks the essential micro-nutrients of honey.
I mean, advancing in life generally requires leaving your comfort-zone, but that may be hard if you lack confidence.