America Has Become a Digital Narco-State

Posted by rbanffy 22 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by BLKNSLVR 22 hours ago

Want to do something that protects a significant percentage of children? Ban social media for children.

Work out a zero knowledge way to verify age, and implement it. It won't be easy, but it also won't require breaking the rules of mathematics as per most of the governmental requests to 'safely' backdoor encryption.

Comment by graemep 21 hours ago

> Work out a zero knowledge way to verify age, and implement it

is it feasible? is it likely given government's desire for more surveillance?

personally I think the best approach is to empower parents - require ISP's and ISP supplied routers have means to filter, ensure child friendly filtered SIM cards are easily available etc.

Comment by tzs 15 hours ago

Yes, it is feasible. The EU has been working on it for a while as part of the EU Digital Identity Wallet project. Parts of it, including zero knowledge age verification, are undergoing large field trials in several countries.

Briefly, here's how it works.

• Your government can issue you a digital copy of government identity documents. This copy is cryptographically bound to a key that it stores in a hardware security module that you provide.

In the reference implementation and the implementations undergoing field testing the supported hardware security modules are the security modules in Apple mobile devices and in many Android devices. They plan to support more, such as stand alone smart cards and external security keys like YubiKeys.

• There's a zero knowledge protocol that lets you demonstrate to a website that (1) you have a digital copy of a government ID document that is bound to the hardware security module of your device and that you were able to unlock that hardware security module, and (2) that ID document says your birthday is far enough in the past that you meet the site's age requirement.

Comment by Aloisius 15 hours ago

It takes 3 minutes to enable parental control software built into every every major OS.

Parents have all the power they need, they just refuse to use it.

Comment by 0cf8612b2e1e 10 hours ago

You should ask a parent how well they work. I have spoken to a few and as a rule, the restrictions are so poorly implemented that they either block nothing or make the application impossible to use.

Comment by John23832 17 hours ago

> Work out a zero knowledge way to verify age, and implement it. It won't be easy, but it also won't require breaking the rules of mathematics as per most of the governmental requests to 'safely' backdoor encryption.

Have parents actually pay attention to their kids and not give them unfettered access to technology. Boom. Easy.

The parents are the second factor that nobody is willing to discuss because the parents are addicted to the exact same technology.

Comment by MintPaw 11 hours ago

Everyone discusses better parenting all the time. But some people forget what it's like being a kid, circumventing blocking systems is trivial if you're motivated, and even if they weren't, a cheap phone costs $80 and kids are very willing to share their old devices.

Comment by KetoManx64 9 hours ago

Kids can also choose to disobey parents and play on train tracks or jump off cliffs or a million other dangerous things. Either you leave it to the parents or you end up spying on every single action they take.

Comment by akudha 12 hours ago

One of my colleagues (he is in his mid forties now) joked that he was raised by TV, not his parents. I suppose today’s kids are raised by social media. It is super easy to give an iPad to a 10 year old, so they don’t bother you while you’re working. Feels like parenting is a bit outsourced to electronics and the internet

Comment by watwut 11 hours ago

Reality check is that parents spend a lot more time actively parenting then they used to. The expectations on parenting went up.

These complains about parents not doing enough are from another alternative reality.

Comment by toomuchtodo 12 hours ago

Hasn’t worked based on the evidence, so we’re moving on to something effective. Australia is up first, others will follow, just as we limit access to nicotine and other drugs or harmful products. The data is robust social media is toxic to kids, and Meta even knew about it and doesn’t care.

Social media bans are like GLP-1s: we know that will power is not a thing, so we use an intervention to help the human. Same deal. “Just do better good luck” is not actionable.

“We have seen the enemy and he is Big Tech.”

Comment by sveme 21 hours ago

The German Personalausweis seems to offer something like this (basically returning a bool indicating whether a user is below or above a certain age), but it seems as if the service indicates which data it requests from the ID card. As a user, I would not be able to state that this or that porn site should only see this age verification. Not sure how the requestable data are in turn requested by the service.

Comment by ForHackernews 20 hours ago

Australia has done this. They've put the burden of proof on the tech firms: you already have this invasive data on all your users, use it to ban children.

Comment by jeffrallen 21 hours ago

And shockingly enough, the EU has been investing in this technology for a while. Check out OIDC4VCI, and the selective disclosure protocols that go with it.

The Swiss citizens just approved a system like this.

Comment by 20 hours ago

Comment by burnt-resistor 12 hours ago

"Think of the children!" No, think of the absentee parents rationalizing invading our privacy because of their laziness. All of this ID requirements bullshit is just about invasive, authoritarian control. Hell no!

Comment by sam-cop-vimes 21 hours ago

Spot on. There was a lot of sensible stuff in the National Security Strategy document published recently, but the attack on Europe was shocking, even though it is in line with recent events. It is time for Europe to chart its own course and reduce dependence on America as it should on Russia.

Comment by actionfromafar 21 hours ago

It's an incredible own-goal for America. Attack Europe, be soft on Russia and China. Forcing Europe to cut ties and cuddle up to India and China.

Comment by sam-cop-vimes 21 hours ago

I am fairly certain that Russia has some kompromat on Trump and to avoid that being disclosed he is destroying the world as we know it. Just being a misogynist racist doesn't quite explain all of his actions.

Comment by ben_w 18 hours ago

That felt right in the first term, but not this time around. Trump just straight up lies about whatever he doesn't want to be true, even when Trump's talking to a journalist and the journalist is asking Trump a question about something Trump said on camera the week before. (Reminds me of Boris Johnson in the UK, that).

I think the simple answer is he doesn't know that "objective truth" is a thing, it's all just words and power-play for him, whatever (seems to him will) work in the moment without any regard for long-term planning.

Like how current AI gets criticised for not really being smart despite appearing so when you don't pay close attention, modified by how biological nets get good with far fewer examples than ML requires.

Comment by xg15 11 hours ago

He can say and do what he wants, but I think the crucial question is if his base and supporters would be ready to go along with it (or at least pretend to).

They seem to do so for almost everything - except the Epstein files. Those seem to be a bridge too far even for the MAGA crowd.

Comment by ben_w 2 hours ago

Sure, but I'm saying if there was kompromat he'd just deny it like he denies other things he's said on camera, I don't think he'd change his behaviour due to being threatened with it.

Comment by 3 hours ago

Comment by rbanffy 19 hours ago

At this point in time I’d ask who doesn’t. He himself stated rather correctly he could just shoot a random person in broad daylight and his supporters would continue to support him.

Comment by ajuc 21 hours ago

The motivation is irrelevant TBH, what matters is the action.

Maybe Trump just wants USA to be "Russia but Better". Maybe he's imagining himself saving the world from "leftism" or whatever. Maybe he just wants money. Maybe he's being blackmailed.

Doesn't matter. What matters is that he's making the world a much worse place.

It's the same as it was with Putin. He told everybody loudly that The West is the enemy. People assumed he's doing it for internal politics reasons. There's no point guessing people's motivations, just listen to them, and when they tell you you are their enemy - believe them.

Comment by 21 hours ago

Comment by __rito__ 20 hours ago

Have you been living under a rock? US under Trump is cuddling up to Pakistan, and not India. India is facing among the highest tariffs for exporting to the US, and the narrative from the US Prez and cabinet has been visibly caustic on India.

Comment by actionfromafar 20 hours ago

Forcing Europe to cuddle up to China and India.

Comment by __rito__ 19 hours ago

Okay, thanks. My bad. It makes sense. I apologize.

Comment by 9dev 21 hours ago

The major headline in response over here in Europe was "the transatlantic relationship is dead now". It’s so confounding, and needlessly destructive.

Comment by charleslmunger 10 hours ago

It's so weird to see the leading heroin story phrased like a hypothetical, when:

1. Heroin itself was marketed as a "non-addictive morphine substitute", and sold to the public. It didn't become a controlled substance until 1914 (according to Wikipedia) 2. The opioid crisis was basically started and perpetuated by Purdue pharma, again marketing Oxycodone with the label “Delayed absorption as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug.” and other more egregious advertising. 3. Britain went to war with China twice to force the Qing dynasty to allow them to sell opium there. 4. President Teddy Roosevelt's grandfather made a ton of money in the opium trade.

It's supposed to be sort of shocking hypothetical, except actually that's basically the history of the actual drug.

Comment by alecco 20 hours ago

  - Let's limit children's use of social media and screens.
  - Great! Let's do it.
  - We need to identify who is 18+, so here's your digital ID for everything. And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job.
  - WTF!
  - That "WTF" just cost you 100 social credits.
UK, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and next USA. It's amazing how coordinated it is. They are using dog-whistles like CSAM, immigration, crime, and now children's wellbeing.

Comment by daft_pink 18 hours ago

Anyone who thinks social media is equivalent to drugs hasn’t seen someone destroy their life with drugs

Comment by John23832 17 hours ago

Have you NOT seen someone destroy their life with internet addiction and social media?

Comment by HaZeust 13 hours ago

In an overwhelming majority of cases where social media ruins a life, I've seen it do only one of the following: (A) change a personality toward opportunism; (B) lose jobs; or (C) chase an endless pursuit of vanity.

In an overwhelming majority of cases where drugs ruin a life, I've seen all 3 at once.

They can both ruin lives and people, no arguing that. But a life ruined by drugs is almost always so much more detrimental and all-encompassing than someone ruined by social media, it's just not a fair comparison.

Comment by 18 hours ago

Comment by fch42 21 hours ago

Fighting wars (more than one, in fact) to force a country into permitting unrestricted sale of opioids has historical precedent of course. The victim then was China, which tried to enforce their laws on drugs ... to the dislike of English Businessmen with enough pocket money to buy the army.

I for one would prefer to buy wine in a Utah grocery store. Or maybe even just a NYC supermarket. Even if it's wine from Texas, though I know that really stretches the meaning of "wine". And I'd also like to carry the bottle publicly as least as proudly as someone can carry their gun.

(oh how easy it is to trigger libertarian impulses. I'm with Voltaire in that one, say what you want. I'll fight - alongside you for your right to do so, and against you when I disagree ...)

Comment by prngl 21 hours ago

I think this is spot on. It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy. I suppose an alternative to bans and regulations is to genuinely pursue the elimination of deprivation, orient our collective capacities towards our collective well-being, and then let people do what they will. Anything short of that seems to be a rather false liberty (and a rather false democracy, while we’re at it).

Comment by Octoth0rpe 21 hours ago

I think we treat the maximization of liberty (in my mind a primary function of government/society, with reasonable limits) as the same goal for both corporations and people, which ultimately is a side effect of treating corporations like people. But these are entirely oppositional goals: Maximizing personal liberty of actual people requires significant binding restrictions on corporations.

In the US we have this overly simplistic narrative of pro-liberty GOP versus anti-liberty DNC which I think badly needs to be separated into pro _personal_ liberty positions (healthcare, including abortion, quality public education), versus anti _corporate_ liberty (environmental regulation, financial transparency, etc).

Comment by rbanffy 19 hours ago

> as the same goal for both corporations and people, which ultimately is a side effect of treating corporations like people

This is a huge problem the US needs a deal with - corporations are artificial beings that aren’t sentient and, therefore, cannot participate in politics. We might need to litigate that with an LLM to make language broad enough to set this precedent and further protect the rights of actual sentient beings.

Comment by rbanffy 19 hours ago

> It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy.

This has been a feature of this kind of language for ages. Remember the arguments used to defang Obamacare, which was an already defanged version of some very basic public healthcare system?

Comment by ajuc 21 hours ago

> It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy.

It's the typical pattern.

If you don't have rules attenuating the runaway feedback loop - some people get a little more initially (talent, money, luck, whatever), then it spirals into A LOT more, which gives them influence over everybody else, which is oligarchy, and that eventually turns into a dictatorship.

The only way to avoid it is to have strong institutions and regulations stopping the feedback loop.

We knew it thousands of years ago, nothing changed. We seem to have to learn this lesson independently in every newly-created domain. It's time for tech sector.

> I suppose an alternative to bans and regulations is to genuinely pursue the elimination of deprivation

How do you propose to do it without bans and regulations?

Comment by api 21 hours ago

There’s different kinds of libertarians, and there’s certainly one kind that is only interested in the freedom to be an asshole.

Note that this kind of “libertarian” also tends to be fine with attacks on women’s reproductive freedom for example, or fine with small local forms of tyranny like the abusive family or community.

Comment by exasperaited 21 hours ago

> It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy.

Because the USA confuses liberty and libertarianism.

You can tell this is almost universally the case because even libertarians don't think they need to vote for libertarians to reach libertarian goals. They will get them either way.

Comment by sam-cop-vimes 21 hours ago

And it also prioritises financial success over everything else, stoking the worst tendencies in human beings.

Comment by neves 21 hours ago

When we read about historical facts, I am always impressed by how entire societies do terrible things. I always thought it was ignorance or information censorship. Nowadays, I see intelligent people working for these big techs here on Hacker News. They are people I admire and who are very well-informed. I then realize how we are not free from the most terrible moments in history.

Comment by pirates 20 hours ago

This is your signal to stop admiring them.

Comment by rbanffy 19 hours ago

It’s hard to walk away from a mountain of money that ensures wellbeing of your family for a generation or two.

Having principles is surprisingly expensive.

Comment by JohnFen 18 hours ago

It is. But people who fail to do so aren't being admirable, so nobody should admire them. Quite the opposite.

Comment by jmclnx 20 hours ago

100% true, as I type this on a social media platform :)

But at least this site does perform moderation and so far it has not been toxic like most others. Plus if someone disagrees with you, just about all of the time, that person comes across as respectful.

Comment by poisonborz 19 hours ago

This is a forum. Were BBSes social media platforms? We need better wording.

Comment by rbanffy 19 hours ago

HN is not designed from the ground up to be addictive. In fact, the simple fact its UI is ugly by default is a significant factor in limiting the audience to people I actually like to hang out with.

We should do meet-ups from time to time.

Comment by insane_dreamer 19 hours ago

HN doesn't serve up endless ads and recommendations, for one.

Comment by andrewstuart 20 hours ago

Banning social media for children is evidence free, nanny state, political virtue signaling that will be the thin end of the wedge that government use to deeply control and regulate and control adults.

“We’re protecting the children!”

Relevant Honest Government Ad: https://youtu.be/ZxRB5qWphJE?si=iT_3v1LyDvUu1UPL

Comment by piva00 19 hours ago

Slippery slope is a fallacy for a reason... Yes, controlling children access if done wrong could lead to control adults but it doesn't mean it inevitably will.

Social media for teens has been studied, we know what it can cause psychologically, the humans programming it are incentivised to make them addicted to it, and addictive they are by using any manipulative technique to increase engagement, and attention spent.

What would you like to see as evidence for it to be regulated as "not for children" like tobacco, and alcohol?

Comment by Aloisius 15 hours ago

The research on social media harm is far from conclusive, despite what people seem to believe. To quote the National Academies report:

> The committee’s review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.

Having read through the couple hundred page report, causality was not established and the studies found both positive and negative effects in different subgroups.

Given banning social media might cause harm to a some groups of children, perhaps decisions on whether to forbid use are better left with parents for now.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/27396

or the one pager for Parents: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/27396/Social_Medi...

Comment by andrewstuart 20 hours ago

Is he describing Purdue Pharma?

Comment by sunshine-o 21 hours ago

I vaguely remember the author is a Nobel Price in Economics so he is supposed to be a intellectual, very wise man paid to warn us of incoming problems and opportunities.

Beyond the clickbait title I am not gonna judge is analysis (he is probably right) but ask the question:

Where were those people 20 years ago? before Meta became a 1.68 trillion business and others became some of the largest companies by marketcap?

Because any room temperature IQ person already figured out a long time ago social media were addictive. No need for a Nobel price. Ironically this is why people get their information from anybody on social media, precisely because they figured out they are not getting any real insight from Paul Krugeman.

Comment by metadope 12 hours ago

There were indeed early warning signs that Facebook was shady.

I remember being delighted with FB initially. It was a wonderful way to keep in touch with extended family and wayward friends.

But then I discovered how difficult it was to control my 'timeline/newsfeed' or whatever they called it. There was a small menu attached that allowed you to Sort By Latest or some such... but it wasn't sticky, and so you always had to select it, and it eventually disappeared completely and... you saw what they wanted you to see.

Originally FB would send you an email whenever someone sent you a message on Messenger, and the email contained the contents of the message, so you didn't even need to login to FB, and I enjoyed having that... But that too didn't last long. When they turned that feature off I realized they were all about themselves and their goal of user engagement, and the value-added (for me) dropped to zero.

Sometime after '15 I disengaged. I left the account alive but haven't been on but thrice in 10 years.

I campaigned for a while, within my family and circle of friends, trying to get them to rally around an alternative (I started by offering Slack, feebly) but I was unconvincing and unsuccessful.

I remember the horror of Thanksgiving 2016, as I stood in the living room of my niece's apartment, and pondered the array of five family members before me. Easy chair, couch x 3, easy chair... each of them engrossed by their phones. Nobody was talking, everybody was comfortable, there but also somewhere else.

Comment by sam-cop-vimes 20 hours ago

The same people have been saying for ages that this stuff needs to be regulated. But all governments are wary of interfering too much in the market. Legislation takes time, due not in small part to the efforts of private businesses lobbying against regulation. Look how long it took for governments to start labelling cigarettes as being harmful to ones health, restricting advertising etc.

As always, it takes bold leadership to bring about change, and it is not always available.

Comment by _DeadFred_ 13 hours ago

My understanding is Meta didn't weaponize algos until they started going after acquisitions and saw what other companies were doing. Then just like they were paranoid if they didn't buy new companies they would loses relevance, they became paranoid if they didn't incorporate much more excessive manipulation they would lose relevance?

I got the impression they were pretty freaked out by some of the stuff they saw going on initially. I can't believe they got on board with it to the extent they did.

Comment by fragmede 21 hours ago

How much does the author actually know about a heroin addiction? I mean, I don't have one, but I've talked to people that do, and a lot of the problems with heroin are because we made it illegal and hard to get. If we sold it for a dollar at every gas station we wouldn't have nearlythe same problems with it we do today. And besides no one sells heroin anymore, everyone has moved on to fentanyl.

Comment by jjgreen 21 hours ago

Spot on. It (Heroin) will eventually bugger your liver, but with a clean supply you get 20-30 years.

Comment by andy99 21 hours ago

This is an unpopular opinion here, I won’t give my theory as to why, but people seem to imagine that drugs being illegal is the main barrier preventing the proletariat from using them and we’d all be rushing to the heroin store the second it became available.

Comment by exasperaited 21 hours ago

Widespread heroin addiction might cut military spending but would not be cheaper for health services.

Sure, in its clean form it won't kill you quickly, but it is a horrendously addictive depressant with significant medium-term and severe long-term neurological and physiological effects that would in themselves cause poverty through loss of work even if it was as cheap to buy as it is to produce.

It should remain a decriminalised controlled substance and every effort should be spent trying to stop people ever starting to take it — the Portuguese strategy. Not least because if it's cheap and freely available, many, many people will overdose on it.

Comment by diego_moita 21 hours ago

He uses heroin as a metaphor. Do you know metaphors shouldn't be taken in very precise details, right?

> If we sold it for a dollar at every gas station we wouldn't have nearlythe same problems with it we do today.

Go to Portugal. Heroin consumption is legalized there. And it isn't a pretty sight.

Comment by tiagod 21 hours ago

Heroin consumption isn't legalized here, it is decriminalized.

Also, it was MUCH worse when it was a crime.

Comment by komali2 21 hours ago

Well, I will love to go to Portugal someday, but for now I used the internet, and found out that since Portugal decriminalized heroin, its drug usage has fallen below EU average:

https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...

Comment by actionfromafar 21 hours ago

It's complicated. Portugal had a huge problem before it was made "legal", too. (It's not exactly legal.)

Look at drug overdose deaths for instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

Comment by reactordev 21 hours ago

That’s the addiction talking. Of course they want it, and easy. Once you have it, you’ll forever want it. It’s like that.

Comment by IAmBroom 18 hours ago

You aren't providing any counterargument. You're just repeating the narrative: one taste and you're an addict forever!

Comment by reactordev 18 hours ago

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

I’m not saying they don’t need help. They absolutely do. I definitely not for legalizing it.

I had a childhood friend spend a decade in federal prison over it.

Comment by RickJWagner 20 hours ago

Paul Krugman. At times brilliant, at times idiotic. Always bombastic, always turning left.

The trick is to try to figure out if his current rant is brilliant or idiotic.

Comment by IAmBroom 18 hours ago

And like Bernie Sanders, never practical.

Right a lot? Sure! Gonna happen? No!

Comment by diego_moita 21 hours ago

True.

In the US, it isn't just about social media being vicious. It is, more than that, how it became a plutocracy that controls the government and congress.

And is a plague that the rest of the world is just catching up to. It isn't just the European Union that wants to regulate it. India's government, Brazil's supreme court, Australia, ...

I which we could have a global wake-up. The world would be a better place without social media.

Comment by sam-cop-vimes 21 hours ago

The American Dream is all about money. Any society which enshrines money as its holy grail for people is bound to end up where America is today.

Comment by reactordev 21 hours ago

This is true. In the last 50 years it went from family to money. A couple recessions scared people into removing regulations and restrictions and next thing you know our fiat is detached from the gold standard and wheeee

Comment by IAmBroom 18 hours ago

Wow, a True Believer gold bug...

Comment by graemep 21 hours ago

I do not think that is a purely American problem by a long way.

Ultimately these regulations will be twisted to serve the same people. We have seen this with the UK's online safety act, it looks like EU law is going the same way.

Comment by bubbajones 22 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by billy99k 20 hours ago

You only care because it's Trump. Before Musk took over Twitter, the US government was not only censoring American citizens by colluding with all of the major social media companies, but allowing foreign dictators to censor their own citizens abroad.

I'm really tired when the online community completely ignores atrocities because they don't ever want to make their own side look bad, but talk about the end of the world when it's someone they don't like.

Comment by andy99 21 hours ago

> even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it

I’m going to stop you right there. Basically the whole opioid epidemic is because herion is illegal. We’d have way fewer deaths if we’d provided safe and legal access to it. And also American companies would have the profits instead of terrorists and organized criminals.

Comment by IAmBroom 18 hours ago

You have it backwards. The opioid epidemic promotes heroin usage, because some people find it difficult to get access to prescription opioids, especially after the addiction ruins their access to normal jobs.

The path is prescription opioids > addiction > any source of opioid. At least amongst the addicts I've met.

A streetwalker once told me that her dream job was selling cosmetics in a mall. She fantasized about that life. Another was a former RN, until a car accident got her addicted to opioids; she owned a mattress and a change of clothes and a crack pipe.

Comment by monooso 21 hours ago

Your comment has very little to do with your chosen quote.

You're arguing that the scale of the opioid problem is a direct result of the associated laws. The quote just states that heroin is harmful to humans.

Comment by leipie 21 hours ago

The key is to regulate it and offer support to people afflicted by it, not let it room free.

Comment by 392 20 hours ago

Did the decades of Oxy which caused this epidemic not count as safe and legal access? I suspect we've tried allowing opiates more than once or twice in the millenia we've been here.

Comment by sph 17 hours ago

I am as pro-drug-legalisation as they come, but the US opioid epidemic can't be blamed solely on heroin being illegal.

Heroin is illegal in Europe as much as in the US, yet we do not have a horde of zombies high on fentanyl on our city street corners. What's the difference?

I honestly do not have the answer, but there is a brilliant TV show called "The Wire" that shows how the drug problem cannot be traced to a single cause, but it is systemic and you can place the blame at any echelon of society — which means it starts at the top. It's the result of corruption, collusion, lobbying, overpolicing the addicts yet underpolicing the doctors and private insurance companies that give opioid prescriptions out like candy. It's the politicians pocketing indirectly the result of this trade. It's the narcos being propped up by the US three-letter agencies because they play a certain role in whatever is today's bad dictator to be toppled. It's the massive inequality for some minorities that have often no other choice than start dealing to pay for increasingly expensive food and rent.

Good luck untangling this knot. You'd unravel the entire structure of modern USA.