regularization

So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?

How should the people of Gaza thank Google for Google's Project Nimbus etc. targeting them for blockade starvation and bombings?

As Anatole France said - they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

There really hasn't been a heretical witchhunt in the US in recent times like against those who do not want US aid to Israel. BDS resolutions and state employees across the country having to sign pledges they won't boycott Israel, college expulsion of Palestine supporters, then expulsion of multiple Ivy League presidents for not cracking down on students more, with Congressional visits and hearings. Nothing this century in the US comes close in comparison.

Despite that, half of Democratic Congressional representatives, including Nancy Pelosi, just voted to cut aid to Israel.

there is no free market here whatsoever. The fact that BYD's cost structure is what it is is the direct result of Chinese industrial policy.

Aside from countless other ways before and after this, the US government handed over tens of billions of dollars in cash to GM and Chrysler in 2008 and 2009.

the baby which merely inherited the money

How many babies inherit money? The earliest heirs usually get access to their inheritance is when they choose to at eighteen.

According to the LVT, capital costs are not real.

Capital costs are not real in LTV?

A carpenter takes wood, nails and hammer and creates value making tables.

Hammers are a capital cost and are made the same way - workers are a factory xreate value by assembling steel and other components making a hammer.

Steel workers un a steel mill create value by turning iron into steel.

Iron miners create wealth by mining iron.

And so on.

Capital costs are accounted for. Not turtles all the way down, but labor - newly created value comes from labor. The value in a hammer comes from the labor to make it a year ago when you bought it.

an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties

You mean like when the Zionists openly stopped food from getting into Gaza, while the western governments were backing the Zuonists? Those people concerned with civilian casualties?

An enemy unconcerned with civilian casualties, give me a break.

This happened two years after the US invaded. In fact the US had encouraged religious Shiite uprising in the south, which is universally acknowledged. The US military invasion shifting power to mullahs, the Baathist has to make concessions, which they had not for decades before.

Isn't this the country the US and UK invaded in 2003 because of non-existent WMDs (shades of Iran today) and overthrew the nationalist, secular leader, so that it has now fallen more into the hands of Islamists?

Incidentally Iraq's parliament told the US military to leave in 2020 and the US has refused. So this is going on under the continued US military occupation of this country.

Right, but the CalPERS is sliced into over 2 million pieces, whereas a family office or gulf sovereign wealth fund has much less divvying up. It looks big until you see it has to be divided 2 million ways, as opposed to maybe 20 ways with a family office. The distribution is unequal. But most asset classes are like that, although less so for a single family house.

Pensions fund a significant part of PE and they do so because they need around a 7% return in order to look solvent.

Pensions fund PE because PE can do a short term cooking of the books in order to smooth out the growth curve. So the return is usually positive each year, not raising problems.

Also what does significant mean? Pensions are the main mechanism non-wealthy people are investing in PE. Being that millions are involved, you would expect pensions would have a sizable portion of the market, but family offices and high net worth offices dominate. If it offers above average returns, why would they not invest? PE is like every other asset class other than housing, the top 1% own a large chunk, the top 20% own the majority, and the bottom 50% own very little. Decisions are not driven by sone fireman, they are driven by the wealthy like everything else. And the origin and continuation of pushing for retirement to come from capital investment comes from the wealthy as well.

That data centers are burning fossil fuels and burning up the earth is not FUD.

Taiwan is not simply an island claimed by Beijing

Yes, China claims Taiwan and China are the same country. Not mentioned is that US policy also says that Taiwan and China are the same country. In fact Taiwan policy is that China and Taiwan are the same country. You would think reading this that Taiwan had declared independence from China as a separate country.

Also on the topic of "simply an island" - Taiwan is not just the island of Taiwan, they are on Kinmen island in the harbor of Xiamen on the mainland PRC. This would be like Manhattan receiving imperial proclamations about its "sovereignty" from China.

The fact is Taiwan was Chinese long before the United States even existed, just like the Russian Navy has been in Crimea since before the US existed. The US funded and armed separatist forces - but in 1900 the US was raising its flag in Beijing's imperial city. The historical development is these imperial intrusions have been pushed back by China. Taiwan is important to China and the US is too occupied blockading Cuba, slaughtering Venezuelan and Iranian leadership, aiding the genocide of Gaza and the invasions of Syria and Lebanon etc., while its health secretary fights against vaccines.

Interesting how politicians, preachers and consumers are the powers in the world but rich people are missing from the equation.

Here is cabinet minister and minister of National Security publishing a video of him smacking around the people on the flotilla who were trying to bring food to Gaza. They were seized in international waters incidentally. He also has them tied up and in other ways humiliated.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/q5nZRNjgGv8

If this is what they are boasting about doing to Europeans in countries who have been aiding his government, imagine what they are doing in private - and to Palestinians.

never once actually did any work

I work at a company creating wealth, and heirs who own stock collect dividends from the company. What work did they do? You're talking about the guy sitting near you who you don't feel is working hard enough, and nothing of the parasitic heirs expropriating the product of unpaid surplus time of those working and creating wealth. Which unions are formed to rest control back from.

If we roll back 10,000 years, people often worked less hours per week. No class society where we have to serve the rich. Drinking alcohol, painting caves. Sounds pretty good.

The stock market keeps going up in the face of the indefinite closure of Hormuz. We're investing in datacenters at a scale that only makes sense

If there is a psychosis, what is it? It is not an AI psychosis - modern AI started in the 1940s, or by some definitions before, and made progress up until 15 years ago to where deep neural networks became viable. And it has been progress on every front since then. No psychosis, it is doing well.

You mention the stock market, and that is another story. Cryptocurrencies, sub-prime loans, dot-com crash, Asian financial crisis. The economy has veered from crisis to crisis, overproduction and overproduction to crashes and bailouts.

AI is doing just fine - the past 15 years are a success for it we did not see in the decades before. If the economy as constituted is dealing with this in a "psychotic" fashion, it would not be the first time.

To me it seems obvious that this is exactly what happened. Democracy is by far the most common style of governance, extreme poverty is falling even as the population rises. A substantial majority of all human beings have a magic screen in their pocket that lets them look up any information they're interested in or contact anyone on the planet who they'd like to talk to. How can you possibly look at the world as it exists today and not conclude that technology has radically changed our lives for the better?

For who? The people who have been living in Gaza for the past millennia (or who were driven there by arms during the Nakba) who the western establishment decided could be deprived of food in 2024? Meaning a genocide. How is all this benefiting them? This is harming them. And many others. Even, to a much lesser degree, the 20% of Cloudflare workers cut this week.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones

They removed changes and added their own stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/214.13.2...

ARIN shows that 214.0.0.0/8 CIDR is still US Department of Defense (or Department of War as Trump and Hegseth aptly call it) but reverse DNS over 20 years later does not still point to the same CENTCOM IP.

Also to a point - US military propaganda arm was doing this over 20 years ago. After getting the gift of country articles to mostly come verbatim from CIA and US State department sheets.

Because the IP is in the edit, and the reverse DNS went back there (and ARIN did not disagree)

More info on this in my other reply.

Look back to the earliest version of the history and information of various countries on Wikipedia. They say themselves they were from US State department or CIA histories of those countries.

I was editing a page on the US massacre of civilians in No Gun Ri, Korea with some IP at CENTCOM removing my edits. I spend my off tine trying to send in facts of what happened, my taxes from my on time pay for some propaganda arm of the US armed forces to remove it.

As the US kidnaps the president of Venezuela and his wife, blockades Cuba, bombs Iran and on and on, great to know someone else is smearing Russia to further my tax dollars funding the endless war on their borders too.

Corruption means something legitimate is happening that can be corrupted.

Maduro was president of a sovereign country. A bunch of kidnappers and murderers invaded the building he was in in Caracas, murdered everyone in the room, then kidnapped him and his wife.

What's the "mission"? To pop up in some room and slaughter everyone in it, then kidnap his wife and him? In order to help steal the resources, billions of dollars in oil, for already wealthy people?

Same thing happening in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria. Israel with US help slaughtering people to steal their land and resources.

There's no mission except theft and murder. There's no corruption because the entire enterprise is rotten to begin with.

What I said is correct. Inflation-adjusted hourly wages are down.

You posted a link that people are working more hours per year, so their yearly inflation-adjusted income is up.

So you're really posting the second negative here, thanks. As I said, tge average hourly median wage is below what it was 50 years ago. From the same federal reports you linked. Plus, we can see from here, that not only are people paid less per hour, they have to work more.

I don't know why you think these two negative things post a rosy picture.

But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.

The scenario you paint is one where everything has been stripped of meaning. One option is to seek more meaningful work and social relationships, on an individual level, and/or on a societal movement level. Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people, to anethisize oneself to being a miserable wage slave with a miserable life.

When I came to the US in mid-90s (as an atheist) over half the population attended religious services regularly.

No. When polled, half the population said they attended religious services regularly.

Researchers going to churches and estimating attendance found actual attendance was always less than what polls said. If people actually attended services like they said they did in polls, pews would be much more full (now and before).

Also, you know two people, but I could give examples as well - a normal secular family doing well compared to some evangelical family which is not doing well at all.

Also - there are suburbs which have, say, a sizeable Norwegian population. People go to some ELCA church. You talk to them, and a lot of them don't believe in the tenets of Lutheranism - miracles, the resurrection of Jesus etc. But they go to weddings, funerals, services, coffee after services. Dinners, clothing drives. Events around Easter. For many of them there is no belief at all, they just have coffee with their neighbors every week. Technically they are considered Christians, without believing in Christianity per se.

The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US has fallen over the past 50 years. With productivity and wealth gains, the median worker working for an hour is making less. Meanwhile, the heirs and rentiers and "rich kids of Instagram" are doing better than ever. Trump just sued the SPLC for investigating neo-nazis and the Ku Klux Klan while Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Lebanon, Gaza etc. are bombed, blockade and whatnot. We"re not living under the Bew Deal or Great Society any more. Things are not going back, this is the new future. Meanwhile, Democratic Socialists of America just cracked 100,000 members, and people might be surprised how active they are in many smaller (and bigger) cities around the US.

Average median hourly wage is not everything, but it is a sign of where the priorities of the US is, and it's not fir those who work and create wealth. As property prices soar and young couples can't afford to buy, the heirs and rentiers are doing better than ever.

Being as the bedrock of MAGA'S base is white evangelical Protestants, as Michael Harrington pointed out long ago it leads to a continuing cycle of Christianity becoming more reactionary and politically reactionary, as the rest of society secularizes. Whether or not that is a good thing, it is what is happening.

Also, with regards to phones, social media etc. and circling back to young couples, studies show married couples met 30 years ago via friends, family, church, school, bars etc. Nowadays the majority, with the number only growing, are meeting via corporations - swipe left and swipe right apps. People stay honest and play video games and watch Netflix instead of going out

The three things said not to be it are part of a shift to increasing alienation, as working people are immiserated. There was an economist 150 years ago who predicted this happening.

Siding with a dictatorial regime

Right, Iran used to have a parliament with Mossadegh as prime minister, what happened there? Oh yaa, Mossadegh wanted Iranian oil for Iranians, so the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, with the help of conservative mullahs, and installed a dictatorship. Then SAVAK with CIA help spent decades slaughtering the secular opposition.

that’s murdered 100s of their own people

There are armed Balochi and Kurdish separatists shooting at the Iranian army right now, no doubt with clandestine Israeli and US support. Incidentally the Kurds had their own state at the end of WWII, until the US and UK made them dissolve into Iran.

Also aside from the bombings, the Basij have been fired on from the ground and have fired back. Who is arming the people shooting at the Basij is unknown, but some signs point to Israel.

I write this less than three months after armed federal personnel decided to march into Minneapolis and among other things kill a nurse and also a woman.

and aided terrorist organizations

The Arabs in southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip have lived there a long time. Over the past century Zionist Jews from around the world have been invading their land, shooting, bombing, starving them. If they fight back the epithet terrorist is applied to them, and if these brave men fighting for their people are assigned the word, it gives it a great esteem.

Russia invading Ukraine and failing, has been the greatest strategic gift Russia could give to the US against China in setting the stage for shaping a defence of, and deterring an offensive on, Taiwan.

Amidst the US bombing Iran, blockading Cuba, slaughtering the president of Venezuela's guards and kidnapping him and his wife, and so on and so forth - US government talk on China can be removed from reality. So this point -

Mainland China says it is the same country as Taiwan.

The US acknowledges mainland China and Taiwan are the same country.

Taiwan acknowledges mainland China and Taiwan are the same country.

So this discussion of "invasion of Taiwan" means PLA troops in mainland China moving to Taiwan. Which could mean the Chinese navy moving into Xiamen harbor (a Mainland city!) and putting its troops onto Kinmen island which is claimed by Taiwan.

Western elites have antiquated ideas, like talking about the rights the Britsh colonialists have over Hong Kong and other imperial nonsense. They brandishing their liberal ideals in their imperial machinations. But those days are over.

Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan.

It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China.

Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would be mainland China "invading" an island in its harbor.

Also mainland China does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. The US does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself? It would be like if the US president sent armed agents to Minnesota who started killing people willy nilly - oh yaa, that just happened.

The most satisfying thing is if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan against the colonial powers, there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it. Just like Russia's assertion over the West tring to nove it's NATO armies to its western borders in the Ukraine. It's amusing to see the US flailing about, hitting a Venezuelan here, a Cuban there to try to look tough. I guess Nicaragua is next on the list. The changes coming in the 21st century are welcome. A bozo like Trump as president is a sign of a fading West.