Drop shipping is the new MLM.

This is a good thing. If the economy was driven by essentials, it would mean we were in a VERY VERY bad place.

Luckily, our economy is mostly based on luxury items, by world standards.

In a simple way, money = value. If someone is "paying", there is demand.

if someone buys it, is that not producing value?

Hmm, do video games fall into the same category?

Eh.

There are certainly things wrong with today's economy, starting with housing being treated as a financial asset, which encourages laws that create an artificial scarcity of it. I'm not saying there is nothing to complain about.

But the fact that not everyone is working purely to create necessities, that some of our economic output consists of luxuries? I don't really see that as a problem to be solved. If anything, I think it's a good sign. Let's not fall into the trap of just randomly complaining about everything.

Everyone is housed and well-fed, so we're using planetary energy resources to create dopamine hits for beer money

I bootstrapped two companies in my 20s. While living off savings to get going, $20k in medical would have been the end of that venture. I'm glad it's working out for you. I don't have hard data, but I suspect being so healthy you don't need a doctor favors younger adults without dependents. And being able to afford up to $20k without losing your business implies a certain amount of wealth before getting started. That matches the profile of most tech founders I know -- certainly all of the ones that bootstrap. I only managed to make it work because for the first one I was on my parents' health insurance and for the second I had COBRA and a funded HSA.

If we want to encourage people to start new businesses, some form of universal healthcare would be a massive catalyst. Starting a business is never going to be risk-free, but there's a big difference between risking your retirement or even your house and risking the health of your child.

What you have is not considered health insurance so much as disaster insurance.

Yeah, it's great if you have money already, or are willing to roll the dice on your family's health. Or have another country to go back to if anyone in your family gets really, really sick.

A place being better by some metrics doesn't mean it's better by all. It depends on which parameters matter most to you. Imagine the overall desperation someone must feel when even a lack of health coverage won't stop them from flocking here.

And by "they all" you're referring to the majority of whom come from third world countries? Sure, you're a step up from that.

I spot checked a few people in their media directory and this is most certainly false. Maybe around a third of people have bios that could imply they're "kids fresh out of the LSE" (even ignoring the LSE part).

What's surprising is how many people (seemingly) work there (hundreds!), for a publication that puts out like 70 articles per week? They got 9 people working on china and the china section only has 3-4 articles per week.

One of the benefits is it forces detractors to criticize the content instead of resorting to fallacious ad hominem attacks about the author's background and education.