The more I see this image the louder this thought becomes in my head, "Whoever unearthed this artifact had to fight every human impulse to just slip this into a pocket and take it home as the absolute coolest knickknack to sit on their curio shelf."
Flew across the country to spend a few weeks hanging out.
Got food poisoning at one of the layover food shacks.
I had a blast... literally (from my ass) and figuratively (hanging out with a buddy). It was a lot of fun and horribly uncomfortable/embarrassing the entire time.
This has made imports into the country expensive and could be a trend that only gets worse: that's if rising US protectionism continues to prop up the greenback.
Honestly curious, what do they import besides raw materials and fuel that would cause any real problems in China?
Fear of US sanctions first triggered this pattern among central banks, after witnessing how the West applied dollar restrictions on Russia in 2022.
In what way are these Indian students trying to cheat the system?
Seems like the issue is that the rules are in the process of being changed (or are changed?) after these students spent however many years going to to school before the rules changed.
Work in these job sectors? You're valuable (until the next rule change that will retroactively label you as "disposable labor").
Work in those job sectors? You're disposable labor whose use is no longer needed, here's your deportation papers (until the next rule change that will retroactively label you as "valued labor").
Depends on what you get to vote on, who gets to vote, if their votes count, etc.
A more democratic system could have done something like, we'll test run Brexit for a few years, make an assessment, and then allow everybody to vote again to continue Brexiting or roll it back. But that's not going to happen because ... well... representative democracy is authoritarian by design. Nobody is going to put a "Roll Back Brexit" question on a ballot who championed a pro-Brexit stance and will fight any attempt to give the people a chance to vote again (heck, they'll probably fight tooth and nail to keep any useful assessments of the effects of Brexit from being pushed into the public sphere to help voters make informed decisions as well).
Representative Democracies are, by definition, authoritarian. A small number of people are elected, democratically, to make the decisions for the majority.
Is the decision to end slavery a majority decision? Then it's democratic.
With the contradiction being that the people who were pro slavery could just decide, "Nah, we're not going to end slavery", and continue to do slavery. Which I'm pretty sure is generally how that went in the USA.
Any situation where there is a power imbalance that can be enforced through physical or psychological means that somebody doesn't agree with is authoritarian. Employer/employee? Authoritarian. Parent/infant? Authoritarian. Bank/bank customer? Authoritarian. Doctor/patient? Authoritarian.
Probably the only reasonable definition of authoritarian would be something like, "To be ruled/governed by an authority." I've decided that Bill over there gets to be in charge of things, they're the authority. I don't always agree with the decisions they make but they're in charge. Which seems like it would overlap a bit with the idea of democratic centralism.
The more I see this image the louder this thought becomes in my head, "Whoever unearthed this artifact had to fight every human impulse to just slip this into a pocket and take it home as the absolute coolest knickknack to sit on their curio shelf."