The only reason we pretend that money is real is because of the Chinese having a big brain idea that it's more convenient to trade conceptual values, than having to exchange literal five chickens for one cow; one and a half cow for a table; and a table for a room in an inn for one night.
I suppose, but we're talking about international diplomacy. And a modern one at that.
Trump's strong arming sounds so 19th century though. His open threat of taking Panama canal, Canada, Greenland, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico is so manifest destiny.
Trump is going all in. He's reverting to the 19th century way of strong arming other countries over petty things. He's reviving the old-school capitalist imperialism.
Look, I know that immigration is a contentious issue, but sanctioning a country for not repatriating its citizens is a disproportionate response. Trump and Co. are really obsessed with immigration to even do this. It says a lot what values they have.
Before I zoomed in on the picture, my first thought is the letters supposed to represent their respective objects could have been in French words. A for arbre, b for balloon, and c for cheval.
Yup, the OOP is really just milking for social media likes by faking the post.
We still have this notion and hubris that we're above animals, and animals are below us who are alright being stepped on and abused. I noticed that in a lot of cultures, their insults and profanities is being compared to an animal (in Europe, the profanities seem to be generally sexual).
Also, for the religious, admitting we're animals is definitely an insult and denial of biblical teachings that god created humans. When Charles Darwin's theory of evolution first became a mainstream sensation, some cartoonists drew him as a monkey. I debated with a religious before who believes in conspiracy theories. After pointing out about evolution, I was called a monkey. I wasn't even insulted though because, yes, that is basically what I'm trying to say. But technically I'm not a monkey, I'm an ape. Humans are apes. The monkeys are our cousins. Religious folks don't like to admit we're animals because it contradicts their beliefs.
Yup, total in denial. Liberal policies has been "we're not our opponent" instead of addressing housing crisis and job offshoring.
If the liberals goes further left than they are now, then they shouldn't complain why the Trump phenomenon exist. It says a lot more on liberal policies than on people in general.
Jaysus, liberals should just admit that they themselves benefit from growing wealth inequality as much as the right does. Who are the ones who keep voting down to build affordable housing in proudly blue states, especially California and New York? Why should the working class vote for a party that make empty promises and giving only breadcrumbs?
Oh yeah, of course. That's why I mentioned consumer and labour protection versus R&D. I understand if companies that make essential goods and services like pharma or vehicles might complain of regulations stifling innovations, but social media companies like Facebook or Twitter don't provide anything essential to our daily lives and thus they don't really require anymore innovation. Sure they provide communications, but there are many other social media and communications services out there who do not sell private data.
Technically, the Holocaust did not start with deportations. What the Nazis did first was make it hard for Jews to live in Germany by harassing and taxing them heavily to make them leave. It is only when Germany conquered much of Europe that they had to deal with so many Jews and other minorities in occupied countries. At first, they did plan to deport Jews to Madagascar, but it's not feasible because of geography and war. They also cooperated with Palestine Mandate to allow Jews to leave. But only a trickle of Jews managed to reach the safety of the Middle East until it was stopped eventually, also due to the complications of geography and war. What the Nazis arrived at instead is to exterminate the Jews; hence the term " the final solution".
Maybe the closest sane conservative politicians in America are in Alaska. They are Republican for a long time but they have ranked choice voting, and universal basic income coming from oil revenue. I can't remember the details but it was before the pandemic that both Republicans and Democrats agreed on a progressive policy, thanks to ranked choice voting that force politicians to compromise.
There are exceptions of course but if you sit down with both conservatives and liberals, both would actually find agreement on many things. It's mainly that politicians intentionally divide people.
Not unless you're dealing with external threats and unreliable ally. Macron is right about having strategic autonomy and an EU army, as much as it pains me to say it because I dislike another heavily militarised Europe.
I live in the EU, there are some good things but also ineffeciencies living in a confederation style government. To be fair, while consumer and labour protection in the EU has been amazing, we have to admit that there is almost no innovation in R&D going on in Europe as a whole compared to the US. Aside from strict regulations, this is because there is no single rule on how to promote R&D. Each countries have their own rules and promotions. Some states are innovators like Germany, or has no R&D at all like Ireland.
Another weakness that the EU has is on production and defense. As you rightly pointed out, Russia wants the West to fragment, and Russia wants the EU to remain chaotic when it comes to military production and have a disunited, if not an incoherent, European army. But external influence is not even the main issue, the main issue is that many EU countries are neutral like Ireland and Austria, who are not part of NATO. I don't know about Austria but it's very unpopular here in Ireland to join any military alliance and there is a negative image of NATO after the Iraq War. Finland and Sweden used to be anti-NATO until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And with the legacy of the horrors of the Second World War, military production in Europe has been weak. Even though the EU has outstripped the US in terms of giving aid to Ukraine, much of these are non-military because European arms industries are struggling to produce. The US is still the primary military donor of Ukraine.
With different competing values and priorities, it's challenging for the EU to remain confederate. A lot of people advocate for the EU to federalise for this reason.
“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party.... It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism.
I have grown appreciation to respect some conservative ideas. As I grow older, I see why some look for stability. There is plenty of good debate when it comes fiscal responsibility and gradual reformism, but this doesn't mean I would reject lgbt rights or support gutting welfare. But yes, generally stupid people seem to gravitate in the direction of conservatism or right.
PS. As a left leaning person, I also agree with Mill's point about liberals but that is a different topic for another time.
I will play devil's advocate. Media outlets are scared of being sued for defamation or scrutinised for what may turn out to be misleading news. That's why there are always referring to "sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity" or adopt a mild language to refer to something. But if I am a news publisher, I would describe Musk's gesture as "appears to be Nazi salute" or to that effect. It is still calling it out as it is, but I would still have plausible deniability.
Yeah, I've gotten more right wing video recommendations on YouTube, even though I have turned off my history. And even if I turned on my history, I typically watch left wing videos.
I'm not defending all billionaires, but there is nothing wrong having net worth of at least a billion because the assets came from your own company. What is more questionable is how can someone go over one billion worth of assets.
Gabe's net worth hasn't increased as far as I'm concerned. I think the bad billionaires would typically be those who obsess with growing their net worth assets.
Unfortunately, whether we like to admit it or not, Google still has better search quality compared to other competitors, even if the quality of Google search had gone down over the decades. Also, even more unfortunate is that Google creeped and embedded itself into almost every fibre of modern digital society. Trying to avoid anything remotely related to Google is almost impossible because you would be inconveniencing yourself. I still have to use Google Maps to get my way around, unfortunately, because other map services are not great.
Welcome to techno-feudalism. Now I know what left wing critics like Yanis Varoufakis mean by the term. Big tech companies have made themselves lords and we have to stick with them for convenience, and the government could do nothing about it.
The only reason we pretend that money is real is because of the Chinese having a big brain idea that it's more convenient to trade conceptual values, than having to exchange literal five chickens for one cow; one and a half cow for a table; and a table for a room in an inn for one night.