Rent is indeed the real killer, it takes waaaay to much of the budget. It's the only thing that has not gotten more affordable. Maybe even worse over the year.
This is the irony. If people worked 4 hour days for the same salary, some would do two jobs to earn more, and then buy/rent bigger. This leads to an increase in rental costs a which means that working 2x 4 hour jobs is essential to get what 1 4 hour job used to get.
The same phenomena has been seen over the last 30 years. When a parent (usually the mother) stayed at home houses were affordable on a single income. After both parents started working prices shot up, now it's essential for both to work, just to pay the extra rent/mortgage. This pushes childbirth later in life, if at all, and means that children are brought up as a factory process rather than parenting.
In the UK this is explicitly encouraged by tax breaks for outsourcing childcare, taxpayer funded childcare, and penalising single working parents through the tax system (60% marginal tax on £50k household income with 1 earner, 33% on £50k household income with two earners, but no way to share tax subsidies)
Sure: discredits other (an thus increases your status), people like complaining (increase your like-ability), feeds people interest (people return for more) -> better relationships. More chance to live.
Personally I am applaud by such behaviour. Even telling second hand is a no-go unless you know the source would be willing to tell the other person.
I think you're ignoring the fact that the person who is doing the gossiping can also be the subject of gossip. If you gain a reputation for spreading untrue negative assessments about others, then you could end up being the subject of ostracism as that behavior also can lead to results that are harmful for the group.
Which, of course, can lead to even more complex "gaming" of the system, but only to the point where the amount of effort you put in outweighs the minimum acceptable level of effort you could otherwise put into the work itself.
Possible problems with GMO:
- Harder to digest proteins
- Possible new allergies for some people (because if slightly different proteins, or mixes from other plants)
- Plants with build in pesticide
- Patents
- Plant monoculture
- Plants that grow faster and are cheaper, but not optimized for taste.
Is the above list inherit to GMO's: no. Do I know if the GMO I am eating is suffering from this: no. As such until I get detailed information about your GMO, I prefer to avoid it.
You don't know if modern non-GMO crops have these problems, either; transgenic (“GMO”) crops actually have greater controls than modern non-transgenic (“non-GMO”, though their genetics are, in fact, artificially modified) crops in many ways.
