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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • If driverless taxis ever go mainstream (and that’s a big if), it will be from companies like Waymo, not Tesla. Tesla shouldn’t be seen as a serious company. I mean, they do sell legitimate products, but their $1.6 trillion market cap isn’t based on what they sell today, but what their cult member investors think they’re going to bring to market in the future. You know, all the stuff that will usher in the post-human, techno utopia. It’s all nonsense, and someday it will all come crashing down, though that could take a while. People can stay delusional for a long time.







  • You’re not getting it. If you like a girl, but there’s a part of her that you don’t like, you can’t just break up with that part of her, you break up with all of her. ALL of her. You get what I’m saying?

    You say you love America, but there’s this big part of America you hate. So you don’t love ALL of America, do you?

    But you also ignored the part of my comment where I rightfully pointed out that racism in America is not limited to only the South. Again, if Trump had won only the South, he wouldn’t be president. You also ignored the part of my comment where I, again, rightfully pointed out that racism is not America’s only problem.


  • I love all of it except the South.

    Do you say to a significant other I love 2/3 of you? It’s an odd compartmentalization, to slice off a large part of something, set that part aside, look at what remains and say I love this thing. I’m talking about America, all of America. The good and the bad, taken together.

    You might say that taken together, the good outweighs the bad. In your mind, the bad is contained, concentrated in one specific region, but that’s just not true. If you think racism only exists in the South, you’re foolish. Did Trump only get votes in the South? If Trump had only won the South, he wouldn’t be president right now.

    There’s also a lot more wrong with this country than racism. That is not our only problem. Even in the areas that might not be as racist, there’s plenty of greed, selfishness, an attitude of “I’ve got mine, screw everyone else.”







  • We had a 22 percent increase in domestic investment.

    That’s good, it really is, but that in and of itself doesn’t mean much. Industrial production left the US for a reason. What’s changed? The cost of living has only gone up, especially housing, which means the cost of domestic labor is still going to be much higher than many other countries, so how do these US producers plan to turn this new capital investment into a profitable enterprise? How are they going to profitably produce quality goods that Americans can actually afford? Are they only going to make luxury goods for the highest income Americans? If so, who’s going to serve the middle and the bottom income levels?



  • People are products of their culture and the material conditions that they live under. So, we have two choices: we can either take a hands-off, or laissez-faire, approach and allow conditions to change organically and just accept any political or social changes that might come about, or we can take a more direct approach and try to change the conditions that people live under, and the culture, in such a way that will make something like the Trump movement much less likely to emerge. But, the second option probably won’t just happen, spontaneously or organically, it would probably require a fairly heavy handed, top down approach. I know many people are quite apprehensive about that, so that approach would likely be quite controversial.

    So, what’s it going to be? Let things just play out organically and see what happens, and accept that the outcome may or may not be desirable, or try to steer the course of US society more directly and deliberately?



  • The US and allies control WTO, and China was only allowed trade on WTO terms after they accepted to follow the WTO standards, basically designed by USA

    That means nothing, anymore. Those standards are meaningless, China holds most of cards, now. Any attempts to reign in China have been half hearted at best, and often undermined by the US itself. As tough as people have tried to sound in their rhetoric about China, the fact is American corporations and consumers continue to do business with them because it’s just too good of a deal for them.

    and American politicians have openly stated how they need to prevent China from expanding their influence.

    Well, they have failed, spectacularly, and that was true LONG before even Trump’s first term, let alone these tariffs.


  • This is the stupidest article I’ve read about the tariffs, and that’s saying something because I’ve read some doozies.

    The author makes it sound like the US and the rest of the world were building a coalition to take on Chinese control of the global economy, before Trump’s tariffs came along and ruined everything. That’s horse shit.

    The article even mentions Vietnam specifically. Do they not know that Vietnam is also a Marxist-Leninist state? Vietnam has taken many cues from China. Vietnam is trying to become a manufacturing hub, similar to China, and the relationship that Vietnam has been building with the US is one of trade that is similar the relationship the US has with China: they (China/Vietnam) make the stuff, we (the US) buy the stuff.