According to…that woman with a book about his wealth? Article says 70 to 200 btw, not 200. Sources elsewhere guess much lower (tens of billions).

US GDP is 27.72 trillion. That’s the movement of money annually.

Yes, Putin’s in charge, with his one hundred million dollars (sarcasm, not exact figure) and zero sway over the entire Western economic establishment.

Uh-huh. So of all the options - just shooting adult deer, or restoring the ecosystem to the way it was, or actual scientific approaches like sterilization, you’re only interested in the one that benefits you, and then you start ignoring the moral implications, and associated risks like humans getting shot. See, the conversation would go smoother if you just declare from the outset that you only care about what benefits you, and we could drop the pretense that this is about what’s actually the best solution.

Taking just the “solution” of reintroducing predators - it’s still not the same. Predation specifically targets old, weak, sick members of a herd. What do hunters do? It’s what, a tag limit and age limit, and that’s it.

This whole conversation always seems so disingenuous. People doing hunting claim these altruistic motives, but have every adverse incentive that has nothing to do with those motives, from stocking their freezers to just bragging about what they hunted. Let’s be for real here, you’re not scientists or veterinarians carefully monitoring and managing a population, what you’re doing is taking the first justification you can find for what you already wanted to do.

Killing animals isn’t ethical. Inevitably the false dilemma gets painted between killing them or overpopulation, but the overpopulation is also a human-created problem, both through overdevelopment and killing off natural predators - the actual antidote is to scale back our development, or reintroduce predators, or simply let other natural stressors manage the population. Plant-based/vegan diet is far more ethical (nonsense about “plants feel pain”, “mice killed by plows”, “I can’t eat vegan because of my blood type” and other vegan bingo card BS aside).

This isn’t the first empire. Masses can be brainwashed. You can even have multiple layers of brainwashing, like how Republicans are extremely brainwashed, and Democrats are secondarily brainwashed to think they’re the moral opposition, while both of them unquestioningly support the undercurrent of global imperialism.

Literally the only escape is the entire population being fully educated on the nature of politics, economics, societies, history. A people cannot realize a free and just society without completely understanding what that requires. Until then you’re all just a fish flopping around on the floor of a boat.