r14c

Eh a death squad is a death squad tbh.

I mean maybe, but China's industrial strategy isn't well served by war. I just don't see the structural incentive.

Peace for who? Like just look at the last 50-70 years of US intervention in LatAm. Backing a series of coups and extremely violent right wing dictatorships.

The issue is one of incentives. The US needs cheap foreign labor because of deindustrialization policies in the 60s and 70s. These were arguably passed as a check on labor power since socialism was still looking potentially ascendant at the time. Whatever the reason though, the contemporary US is reliant on keeping foreign wages down and domination of the oil trade. Imperialism grows out of this need for external resources to maintain economic growth. It would be less relevant to us if we had better fundamentals, but we traded those away to avoid letting certain demos get wealthy and powerful.

China's play is more mercantile. They benefit most from stable trade conditions. They get richer the more customers they have. They benefitted massively from becoming an industrial trade partner with the US in the 60s and 70s. Because of this, they have completely different foreign policy objectives. All they need to do to win is normalize relations and build trade infrastructure. Its way cheaper than imperialism.

The fact those plans also have subclauses ensuring the party elite are made even more wealthy and powerful is less alluring

Our oligarchs do that too and all we get in return is declining infrastructure and paranoia.

Isn't the issue here the lack of accountability? Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I don't think its a foregone conclusion that governments are fundamentally corrupt. Ours certainly is and we have a very weak constitution which makes it worse, but that's the US. I think better constitutions are possible, but we have to stop treating it like a sacred document and be practical.

Evolution doesn't work like that. What we have here is a dead end. For whatever reason, this system isn't advantageous from an evolutionary perspective, so we don't reproduce. That's natural selection.

Glazing? I stated an historical fact. What doesn't math for me is why we care so much what kind of economy other people decide to have. Eastern Europe isn't soviet anymore obviously. They can make their own choices.

My impression is that China has a pretty high standard of living. They have been extremely successful in reducing poverty over the last few decades. You should see how shiny even some of the third tier cities are.

It seems obvious to me that a complex society needs a privileged class to function, but I don't think it's self evident that every kind of elite class would behave in the same way.

Not to be too pedantic, but my understanding is that the transition to agriculture was not a singular event like this. Afaik this process of forced technological displacement is a relatively recent development connected to the rise of capitalism.

I would read that meta study. Especially if they verify and compare methods.

We kill people all the time, what's the difference? Isn't it a sovereign nation's prerogative to do whatever they want? That said, it is our prerogative to be nosy and violently mess with other people's affairs too so..

We didn't try communism as far as I know. We hunted it down and murdered it in its cradle if I'm reading the CIA declassified archives correctly.

With LLMs you can make 20 websites and still not really understand the language. For learning you really do have to type the code out yourself. That's how you build familiarity and understanding. Reading code is a good starting point, but it doesn't really gel until you start writing your own ideas down, fail, and try again until it works and makes sense. Especially if you're working in a new language with unfamiliar semantics.

Yeah some hardware combinations are just broken. IF ur lucky everything will just work, if not you can likely fix it with enough skill. That's better than nothing, but understandably frustrating if you accidentally pick a bad combination of devices.

Unfortunately the install process is always going to be at least a little bit technical. I wish it wasn't, but idk how you'd do that without making the os like an emmu chip that you can swap out, instead of a thing you write on your drive.

Sometimes a project is largely whimsy and I don't think that's a bad thing. People don't "seriously" use 9front either, it kinda exists because there's a group of people who just want to make a unique thing.

I do somewhat agree on the beta label issue, but I would just put up a ymmv warning label and call it a day.

From what I understand about the Texas facility, SpaceX has also not honored their agreements regarding protected wildlife zones in the area. Damage from explosions is understandable, but they apparently not taken sufficient precautions to protect the surrounding area from their regular operations.

Western culture is hierarchical, hierarchy isn't inherently Western. Lots of cultures do it.

Oh I see. I guess that's one way of looking at it. I tend to favor appropriation because it simplifies the accounting. You don't need equal outcomes exactly, you just ensure that everyone has their basic needs met and the ability to improve themselves. Historical context matters, but the issue tends to boil down social instability due to repeated displacement (redlining, gentrification). Allow people get rooted into a place and they'll build whatever they need to flourish.

Yeah I guess we're talking about different things. Thanks for clarifying.

I think we're talking about different things then.

Nobody is asking for equal result. Equity means sharing the rewards of productivity, instead of allowing a group of people who do nothing get rich off of other people's hard work. That's fair.

Doing good work should be rewarded!

Ranked choice voting allows for instant run off elections. Should have a similar effect without requiring a full redo of the election.

Could you expand on that? My concept of fairness is pretty congruent with equity.

For context, states within 100mi of Salt Lake City are:

- Wyoming

- Idaho

100mi doesn't get you into the population center of either state. the western US is BIG, really you're talking like 1k miles to get anywhere that's meaningfully different from utah. Depending on where you live in utah, that might not get you out of the state either.

everyone is different, even if I'm biking/walking everywhere and working outside, I still need to work myself to exhaustion if I want to get any sleep. I currently train muay thai, but even when I was young and doing yard work for a living I still trained with my friends and played sports. heck, growing up my life was american football training during the day and after school, regular football a couple of times a week with friends, running around for fun, and then doing heavy yard work at home and at neighbor's houses on weekends.

Not that your's isn't valid, some people (like me) have a big surplus of energy that needs to go somewhere and sometimes the best available outlet is lifting weights.

Do the stats back up your anecdote? iirc Tesla autopilot has some bad failure cases

Yeah idk why they're so intent on doing this migration it seems silly and wasteful and bad for their image.

That's the idea!

Like I said, there are representation issues because money is speech which gives the rich extra say in policy. So it's not exactly that simple, because of the anti-democratic pro-rich bias in our legislative system, but we'll get there.

You misunderstand, I don't hate rich people, I want them to be accountable to a democratic system of governance aka paying their owed tax.

It's not about the special treatment, its about being equal under the law.

Tax loopholes which result in a lower effective tax rate. Lesser accountability for crimes. Ability to break any law which is penalized only with fines.

Do you really not know what rich people can get away with in the US?