The cleaner isn't the problem with respect to the cleaning itself, but what about the culpability in exploiting someone who has lost their mind? In this case Zuckerberg is willing to accept the exploitation that occurred in the past simply for what it is, but now that he has had a moment of clarity he also cannot let it continue.

Which is the same reason everyone else seeks relationships with other people. That is the value social interaction brings. Now that you've cracked the code, so to speak, do you find this behaviour grating because you don't normally like to have your thoughts and ideas challenged/enlightened?

The Western world lives under democracy. Power is held by the population at large. If it appears that the older population is holding more power, that is simply because they have more time, being retired, to exert their democratic duty.

Exactly. Humans crave novelty and hate doing what everyone else is doing. That idea was presented because it was still a fairly novel experience to live in the city. Getting to live in the city was seen as something special. Now it is what everyone does, so it isn't novel anymore. You no longer "need to live in the city" because, generally, you are now already there. The novelty is gone. The happy youth have moved on to living the next big thing. Once everyone else starts to recognize what they are doing, general happiness will temporarily increase again... until that new normal loses its novelty and the cycle repeats once more.

It is the tale as old as time. This is ultimately the same reason for why people set out to discover and settle in America in the first place!

It tried to, at least, but I'm not sure it succeeded. The growing secularization up to 2020 follows the long-term trend towards unhappiness and peak secularization and peak unhappiness line up too. Happiness has even started to improve in line with the growing return to religiosity that has occurred most recently. The data it presents as supposedly dismissing religion actually makes a reasonable case for religion.

Of course, the reality is that there never one reason. Americans are sad for millions of different reasons. The idea that if we fix that one thing all will become right with the world is pure fantasy.

Are we looking at the same graphs? That's not what I saw.

I'm not so sure of that. America has rapidly moved away from believing in some kind of magical spirit in the sky, but they most certainly haven't given up on religion in general. They have latched on to other blind faiths and rituals.

What hasn't typically come with those new religions, like you allude to, is a church; a place where fellowship occurs. That is a reasonable possibility for the decline in happiness. Research regularly suggests that most people find happiness in relationships with other people.

Nothing is ever single-faceted, though.

Housing is actually quite liquid as it is incredibly easy to mortgage. More likely you are overestimating how much housing value is actually there. The majority of American homeowners have already tapped into that liquidity. Owning a house that is worth, say, $1MM on the open market doesn't necessarily mean that your net worth is $1MM.

The wealthiest people I see don't live in any particular place. They have houses everywhere — inner city, the spacious suburbs you mention, rural, and everything in between. They don't limit themselves to living in just one country either.

Having one home and seeing your entire life revolve around it is what poor people do.

Although, honestly, from my farmer perspective I think that is even a stretch. Someone needing to replace their 50 year old machine right now is more likely to look at a 20 year old used machine with a smaller outlay than the brand new Ursa. They are considerably less pricy than a Deere or Fendt, but still pretty capital insensitive relative to what a farmer in the market they are trying to address can justify.

Granted, there is no doubt someone out there who is willing to pay for the "new car smell". There is always someone out there who will buy what you are selling, no matter what it is you are trying to sell. The question, as always, is: Are there enough buyers out there to keep the cash flowing? The fact that they still have 2025 models sitting on their lot that aren't moving, I'm thinking not, but we shall see. Kudos for them being willing to try.

But technology is expensive. That's the play here: To strip the tech so that the tractor can be sold for a fraction of the cost. And for the farmers who don't need tech, that might be appealing. They will never win over the farmers who are already buying equipment with all the bells and whistles, but there could be an opportunity to capture those who are still in something 50 years old and are looking to update to an affordable newer machine that isn't worn out.

Repairability will be the biggest concern for any potential customer. It helps that they've tried to stay as "off-the-shelf" as possible, but the article suggests they struggle to keep parts already and there is no dealer network to see that the parts are sitting where the farmers are located. John Deere is the market leader mostly because they've worked hard to make sure you can get parts as soon as you need them and not have to wait days/weeks to have it shipped from across the country/world, if they exist at all. The Belarus tractor saga taught farmers the hard lesson of what happens when the machine is cheap to buy but parts are difficult to source long ago.