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It’s not clear to me that force is cheaper. On the contrary, force causes friction. Dealing with people who don’t want to be there results in additional overhead that may be hidden/not reflected in numbers.

Force reduces legitimacy because there’s a greater risk of abuse and bias in jury selection.

Voluntary choice makes the process more legitimate, not less.

The same issue comes up with conscription, say: there’s honor in defending your country voluntarily, if you decide it deserves defending. But if you’re forced to defend it regardless, your efforts aren’t a reflection of merit or legitimacy anymore.

Take the POV of a third party from another country. Let’s say you’re European and you observe, from afar, the US being attacked by a foreign adversary. You also observe millions of Americans signing up the next day to defend America. That would mean something. Europeans could note this development as proof that America has values that are worth defending. But if Americans were instead conscripted, this signal would be lost.

Making juries voluntary doesn’t mean getting rid of them.

It’s still arbitrary if it doesn’t address your objections. That’s a violation of consent and thus irrational.

By that logic, the government could arbitrarily force you to do anything the legislature approves of.

The difficulty of finding volunteers alone means that jury duty must be mandatory.

Not necessarily. It might just mean that courts are bad at persuading people to be jurors.

… if it were voluntary, it wouldn’t be fair for those who did serve.

By that ‘logic’, America never could have abolished slavery because freeing the next generation would have been ‘unfair’ to slaves. What a stupid argument.

Why does John Doe deserve your best effort? He’s a random stranger to you. Why should you care what happens to him? What has he done to deserve your effort and consideration?

This stance sounds like sacrifice/altruism.

https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sacrifice.html
https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html

This sounds like sacrifice/altruism.

Shouldn’t use ‘this’ in isolation. Use a noun with it.

As of 9087189, the footer automatically hides and shows based on scrolling behavior.

Try it out and let me know if this doesn’t help.

This might be a difference in dialect. In New Zealand (and I assume other places, like maybe Australia, UK and Ireland) it is common to use ‘must not’ to mean:

a) ‘ Is forbidden to’ (the meaning you are familiar with),

or

b) ‘necessarily cannot’, usually in a deductive way.

Example: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.”

This is much more natural to me than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”

From what I recall, it’s a scam in Germany, too. From skimming the article, ~all of its criticisms apply there as well. For example, “Organic food has a larger impact on climate because of the greater area of land required to farm it.” I don’t see why that would be different in other countries.

Food quality [in the US] is worse than third world countries.

That seems like a wild claim to make, seeing as you can safely drink tap water in the US but not in third-word countries. That tells us something about the concern for the safety of consumables in the US. I cannot imagine that food safety in the US would be anywhere near as bad as it is in third-world countries. I mean… India? Nah.

Organic food is a scam. Participants in double-blind experiments can’t tell what’s organic and what isn’t. Organic food hasn’t been found to be healthier than non-organic food. The ‘organic’ label was never even meant as a health endorsement. It’s just a way for stores to charge you more. Don’t be a sucker.

https://news.immunologic.org/p/organic-foods-are-not-healthieror

Yeah. Kidding aside, although California is gorgeous, taxes are a serious issue. Politicians have floated the idea of a future exit tax. Retroactive, I believe (!). It’s made me think twice about moving back there.

I mean ‘mustn’t’ as in ‘must not’.

I realize that. The linked Wiktionary page covers the contraction. The contraction isn’t the issue.

In terms of climate, California might be the best place on the planet to live in. But the downside is that you live in California 😂

No. If living in the best place on Earth requires me to learn a new language I will happily do so. Thankfully I have an interest in languages so it wouldn’t be a problem for long.

The current industrialisation of food is problematic, but these are parochial problems. There is nothing about industrialised food production that is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. Problems are soluble!

I’ve found that if I stick to Whole Foods type places the quality of food is quite good, including some options that aren’t available in NZ.

But yes, the mainstream food options are crap, including the majority of restaurants.

Thankfully the US has reverse-osmosis water filtration options pretty much everywhere.

Do you care to be around people that speak your native tongue?

I second that about Las Vegas. If you don't mind the provocative posters, southern Nevada, southern Utah, Northern Arizona is a great place to be.

All the areas in the US I have lived in have terrible water quality.