garte

> It also doesn't help that it's easy to lump 'the left' with 'everything I don't like re social issues' because the institutional left is basically neoliberals who prefer to talk social politics to avoid talking about economics.

That's actually a great analysis, thanks for that!

"Hail capitalism because we're only civilized under the influence of game theory!"

I think we're living in a highly individualistic society and what little high trust remains is outside of the logic of markets.

You should have seen the dark age... if everyone fended for themselves there we wouldn't be here now. You know how much you depend on your peers without any of the affordabilities of today's age?!

you know what happens to you if a jet engine moves your car out of the way? you have the accident inside your car by yourself, you become the accident. physics states that all forces will be equal.

there needs to be some form of energy input to analyse the co2 to another molecule. the logical input would be the sun. but why not use the sun directly via solar instead of going the long way over fossils?!

you know who _own_ the means of production more than ever? the rich. they control your labour environment. they control politics. so you're the opposite of independent from them.

in about 15-20 years when all office jobs are gone and we're only talking to machines there is going to be "ai alignment and safety specialists" doing the same jobs in smaller offices for less pay than customer support does today. they'll be fixing "misaligned" models and penalizing citizens for deviating (see credit scores, penal system today) all from the comfort of their home.

they'll be more afraid of terrorism, black people and muslims than ever. and lets not get started about socialists!

however you spin this it is going to deteriorate your average job opportunity at least in the us. the us will be where China was 50 years ago: worse workers rights, worse political participation, more low income jobs working for "miltech superintelligence corp".

what hegseth does to your military, amazon-ifying it is what is also happening within your political system stripping you of your civil rights.

at least china had an economical goal furthering the nation state. maga has... what? sucking up to elons, zucks, bezos and other super rich weirdos in the hope of resurrecting the big american empire again. it's devastatingly stupid, really.

_any_ end-product that does not pay its suppliers acts this way. that's just another wording for a thiefdom.

> This is because Europe, and everyone else in the western world, is obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.

Either you're an American which would prove the "most Americans are ignorant about their imperialism and their own militarized society" or you aren't and aren't watching that many news the last 10 years... either way that's not a very... thoughtful comment.

it takes at least 20 years to build a nuclear power plant and it takes another 20 to build it back. it costs a multitude of resources and money to build, maintain and tear down compared to renewables.

nuclear has its role currently but it's not the future.

What I'm wondering these last few years is whether American "politics" has anything actually political to discuss like ensuring the pension system is still intact in 30 years, improving access to a solid education (and even more so: what does that mean?), drug prevention, transparent election processes, tax and debt management... Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI ... stuff that you could bicker over after all the actual politics were decided upon.

Is there actual politics? Or is it all for show?

(This is relevant to corruption because I think a populace is a lot more receptive to ignoring corruption if the politics is emotionalised and people are entrenched and you don't talk about stuff that actually would benefit you but you have to decide on how to act on it)

you know: you're the work horse of this conversation right now. you add nothing of value to it.

there are other factors at play like AMOC halting and breakdown of habitats that are codependent with other habitats. you dont get to pick and choose regions since earth is a huge interconnected system itself.

stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.

the question is how europe and the us will manage degrowth. atm europe is ahead while the us is acting like a spoilt child calling for more cars and ac.

This polemic is quite sad. Wars are only cool in movies. And - apparently - in US politics. The reason the EU shirks talking about war is because it actually lived through it. And it wasn't cool.

The US is waging wars far from their borders (of which they all lost since about 50 years) while the topic in the EU is self defence within their borders, that's a different ball game.

A third of the US economy is propped up by waging wars. That's not even being imperialistic that's just a very costly and damaging social service program that costs a lot of lives.

It is often hard to put an economic value on research in general. That makes the whole "labor market" highly different from the rest of the world.