You cannot win a war without a manufacturing base. That’s the thing that public transit won’t fix. It won’t give us a manufacturing base. Auto builders will.
There are probably plenty of ways to ensure a manufacturing base, but having a robust auto industry is one way that is pretty well understood.
I don’t like the amount of inefficiency caused by protectionism, though.
when I first watched Full Metal Jacket (as well as other films by Stanley Kubrick), I couldn’t understand a lot of the content - for example, the “War Face”
I actually grew up in one of these, and I fully agree.
Yes, my country was significantly larger and more influential a century ago. It even was an empire, with an emperor and all! But no, I don't feel like the average person born back then had a better life than me.
> I don't feel like the average person born back then had a better life than me.
This is true for (almost) anywhere in the world. Everybody has a better life _on average_ than 100 years ago.
> It even was an empire, with an emperor and all!
But the fact that your country was the capital of an empire a century ago is a large reason for why it is richer now, and generational wealth was indeed passed on.
This perhaps is visible if you look at countries that used to be subservient to yours, in empire times. Are they not - relatively - still poorer than the former empire capital?
Oh, definitely! Many former empires still benefit from their history.
But all I'm saying is that there's a path to preserving wealth beyond outright remaining an empire. (Whether it's still possible after making hypothetical full reparations is a difficult question I don't know the answer to.)
What you're missing is the role the U.S. has historically played in preserving and protecting democracy in the world and, particularly, Europe.
If America was suddenly no longer a hegemon, it would be qualitatively different. There are other hegemons in the world that would step into the void left by the U.S., and it would be their influence that would be felt most the world over, including by the countries you named.
Exactly. People act like if the US steps back there will suddenly be peace and everyone will get along. What will happen is someone else will step into the US position or multiple someone’s will fight for that position. Neither are probably good for the US or the world.
Another problem (which Trump is idiotically pushing) is for everyone else to grow their military. Do we really think the world is safer with more countries having larger militaries that are an election or coup away from no longer being allies?
At this point, and from this point onward, some other hegemons sound darn good compared to US. russia aint one, they simply lack competence for anything grander than petty squables at their borders. Everybody hates them, inclusing all former soviet bloc countries and only deal with them when they have to.
Ie China is not doing sudden backstabbing of its allies, strongarming weak at their weakest point. In contrary ie it helped develop parts of Africa that were severely neglected by western powers, not for free but that was never the case. They did some not so nice stuff, but so did US in the past, in much higher numbers. Tens of millions of civilians are dead because of failed US policies and invasions which ended in withdrawals and defeats in past 80 years.
With all negative stuff on China (uighur treatment, other cases of human rights violations) its still shines compared to US now. Now for any outsider (>95% of mankind), why should they still ally with US now?
Why do you present China as an alternative? I’d you’re a western country, the CCP is not a body you want anything to do with unless you’re desperate. They do not share western values. If you don’t ally with the US, you really, really want to be a separate center of power, because everyone who isn’t US wants to exploit you dry and admits it openly.
Most of the "protection" and for democracy stuff the US has been up to has been to protect their own corporate interests to extract resources from those countries, see all of South America and some of the middle east.
If Britain were a US state it would be between Mississippi and Alabama in GDP per capita.
Not sure I’d call the place well off. Granted, a lot of the reason they’re in this situation is because they put everything into stopping the Nazis and thus saving the world. The US kinda lucked into inheriting the UK’s wealth.
yeah honestly files was such a disappointment for me. Modern i5 from 2 years ago desktop system on windows 11 and it would crash every 2-3 days just browsing with at most <15 tabs open.
Was it coded in electron? What's filepilot made in?
Seems pretty disingenuous to include this, no? No invasion ever occured, compared to the million or so deaths in Afghanistan and god knows how many by the time the Ukraine conflict is over.
> This is why the bump model that 4chan uses is superior.
The elephant in the room is that 4chan's average quality of content is by far the worst of any major forum platform. The "bump" model is also used iirc by most bbs or older-style internet forums. In the modern age, incel forums are probably the most popular of these older-style forums (and surprisingly they probably have only slightly better average quality than 4chan).
So, correct me if I am wrong, but the bump model usually results in shitty average quality of information.
As the bump model needs heavy moderation as the upvote/downvote system is a form of self-moderation/censorship. However, the entire appeal of most sites that use the bump model is to shitpost or be edgy...
Honestly, the bump model does sound intriguing from a utopian, critical-thinking first, free speech first-principles perspective, but I'd like to see an example of a successful popular forum that implements such in reality.
The bump model allows chaos wherein you, the reader, must critically evaluate everything with no preconceived notions or pre-filtering. This is how you question, re-evaluate, and sharpen your knowledge through productive debates. There are diamonds and gems in "flat", bump-structured fora, that do not exist in other group-think, mass-consensus-based sites.
Why does the average quality of information matter? You are making a trade-off for convenience. It is indeed convenient to accept common group-think. If you are critical enough to recognize low quality posts on bump model sites, why are you concerned with low quality posts? Read on to the next post.
Insert the meme here of Cypher stating that he doesn't even see the code anymore, but the remixed version of "I don't even see the shitposts and shills anymore."
>I'd like to see an example of a successful popular forum that implements such in reality.
You know what they are, but I will elect to avoid an instaban by posting them here.
> You know what they are, but I will elect to avoid an instaban by posting them here.
You cannot list them, because I already have and I have not been instabanned.
There is not actually much chaos in these supposed "bastions of free speech". Because in practice, threads are often created by highly motivated users and can be brigaded by coordinated groups (IRC/Discord groups). Even without so, culture and groupthink emerges simply because people mimic each other.
This is the problem with all utopian first-principles liberty thinking, in practice, they fall prey to the same easily observable defects in human nature. Thus, forums like hackernews thrive because of competent moderation in their stead.
High average information quality is a top 3 important metric for browsing any content on the internet, and quality does not "emerge" effectively through this supposed "diamond in the rough" system.
These are very broad generalizations you're claiming with no evidence.
> Most of countries are more or less on the development level that their culture and geographic location permits.
So, given this assertion, no developing country should ever hope to join the ranks of a developed nation? Unless they change cultural variables or conquer new lands. Yet we see this playing out in Europe and East Asia and now Africa and India.
> Taiwan will give Singapore a run on its money
Singapore's GDP per capita is $70,000 while Taiwan's capital city sits at $35,000.
You have to be careful looking at GDP per capita. That money doesn't always stay within the country, especially with tax havens.
Look at Ireland's GDP per capita - it's on par with Singapore! But a lot of that is due to the tax strategies of companies like Google that park their IP in Ireland, then "sell" it to countries in Europe. That's all GDP for Ireland. But what happens to the money? It gets pumped back to the US.
It's similar with Singapore. There are huge refineries, and pharmaceutical manufacturing on the island. The country makes these product (often of high value), which contributes to the GDP. But that money exits the country (save for the workers in Singapore) back to the HQ country.
If you look at median wages in Singapore, you'll get a much better sense of the wealth. But do note that the number the Singaporean government quotes doesn't include the 40% of the population that is migrant workers - it's only Singaporean citizens and PRs. So it ignores the bottom ~40% of workers (save for the highly skill people on work passes).
Would Singapore be a genuinely worse place to live if its GDP per capita would be "just" $35,000 instead of $70,000?
It would probably have slighly smaller population, less economic regulation and more sustainability. So the difference between Yew and "number two" is the difference between "Excellent" and "Great".
Come on, is that so important? I'd rather read on about a leader who turned "mediocre" into "pretty good".
Because most countries are not Singapore, they don't have what it takes to be even Taiwan.
"When a Rhino looks at the moon, he wastes the flowers of his spleen", as neither Japanese nor Chinese say.
This is just moving the goalposts and sophistry at this point. Your initial statement was Taiwan was measurably better per capita than Singapore, though the GDP and economic statistics show otherwise. You can also look at various happiness indices, where Singapore is #1 in Asia, since happiness is correlated with GDP per capita.
and If you really believe $70,000 is no different from $35,000, I urge you to donate all your income excess of $35,000 to me. I take Venmo, Cashapp.
I believe that you are super wrong and Europeans were always present in Singapore in large numbers, even if they do not show up in citizenship numbers.
They did before WWII and they certainly do now.
Whereas these 20% non-Chinese cannot turn a Chinese culture country to something else, hence the South Korean / Taiwanese / Hong Kong trajectory.
>It's important to realize that this is vastly different from what scientists/philosophers throughout history have generally believed - even upto fairly recently, some form of Descartes-like dualism,
This spirit-physical duality is mainstream in the West, however you are reaching when you say that every culture and their thinkers held the same beliefs.
I played it for a bit but the combat felt like it was optimizing for spectacle rather than depth or satisfaction. Diablo III delivered the top-down grindfest fantasy better for me, so all throughout I kept asking myself why I wasn't playing that instead :p
But why do you ask? Did it go this route too? With Amazon money behind it I figured they'd be ruthless in stopping RMT.
What is this racialized nonsense, have you seen Jensen Huang speak Mandarin? His mandarin is actually awful for someone who left Taiwan at 8.