Reading this feels living through new dark age of Human–computer interaction (HCI). As and oldschool engineer, I was though HCI in year 2008. How to place and calculate controls, heatpaths, click to action counts, colors, where to use what... And all this accumulated knowledge went down the drain (even in military!). Now rediscovered like some lost art.
The sealant isn't just for water ingress protection but also to have no hard edges that car tires will eventually snatch upon and erode the edges. Using a compactor makes it less likely if done well as well.
In our setting predators do the job - hawks do lions' share (LoL) and foxes the rest. So agingn chicken does not happen. Although we had a rooster - a tiny one, which had incredible surival skills - was over 10 years, killed 2 bigger roosters himself, numerous unobedient hens, survived direct fox attack and dodged hell knows how many hawk strikes. Eventually went blind and had to part with his head out of mercy.
Trump administration uses ALL levers to achieve goals, so if EU will push too hard against US companies... Canada, Denmark, Mexico examples show - a deal will me made.
As an european I envy so much this great purge - here entire castes build on feeding from grant money, perpetuating DEI, green transition, gender studies etc. Overnight nothing-scientist/ NGO profesionals carreers are over, like in those "AI stole my job" videos. Sadly EU still holds strong perpetuating this grant bottom feeding, poisoning academia and discrediting NGOs.
I'd like to offer: both can be bad. Any large system is going to have a lot of inefficiencies, and something to dislike for everyone. But its overall function can still be important enough that taking a sledge hammer to the whole thing is still much more harmful than whatever motivated picking up the hammer.
>Any large system is going to have a lot of inefficiencies
Hence one needs the free market. The govt. typically lack the checks and balance that the free market automatically provides hence it _always_ results in bloat.
Right, understanding that the government itself creates the space for the free market to operate, so any tinkering with it ought to be done carefully. New companies will replace old ones that die- and this is good. Failed states can and do happen, and it would be hubris to think it couldn't happen here.
>Right, understanding that the government itself creates the space for the free market to operate,
In the US the gov has become too big so that it cannot support a free market.
( there are some estimates that say 60% of our income goes into taxes of various forms). More over govt are the reason for a no freemarket. For me Govt is synonymous with the mafia, a more polished, legalized version ( yes, we differ here, so we can leave it at that)
>so any tinkering with it ought to be done carefully.
Most of the govt can be removed and no one will notice except govt employees.
No I do not think so- America owes its success to the common Americans, not to the govt. Personal question: Have you lived/worked at length in any third world country?
Timothy Snyder's book "On Freedom" might be a good read for you. It's about this common (but quite recent) fallacy that freedom means only freedom of government interference or oppression, rather than true personal freedom being something that needs to be built and maintained by society at large -- which would be the core role of government.
In simple terms: how free do you think you would truly be to lead life the way you want if there were no institutions that produce and distribute electricity, manage communications networks, research and produce medicine, provide emergency services, build transportation infrastructure... something to think about. Few modern westerners would equate the idea of "freedom" with that of fully self-sufficient, isolated hermit life with everything that entails.
A lot of people today probably simply forgot how much of their cushy lifestyle was made possible by government, because they never had to work or fight to build it.
In fact I have! And that has greatly informed my opinion: the people I encountered in those countries were every bit as capable as common Americans, but they lacked the institutional support which Americans so easily take for granted.
Wrong, In my observation, common people in most 3rd world countries (but not all) are corrupt, lack ethics, are lazy, often stupid etc. Examples: Mexico, most African countries, China etc. Govt. are universally corrupt regardless of how developed the nation is, though they will vary to the degree to which they are corrupt.
We are taking common everyday interactions: small businesses, deals, trade, customer service etc. Americans by far ( and so would citizens of other first world nations) are relatively superior culturally when it comes to everyday interactions.
Interesting. This might explain why racism so often shows up in crowds wanting to overthrow the government: if you genuinely believe your people are naturally superior to others, then you might actually come to believe your success has nothing to do with your institutions.
Why label my view as racism? This is what is observed.
(Side note - the people who migrate from those 3rd world nations to America are generally a reliable, conscientious lot, way much more than people in their home countries)
This sounds like Hollywood celebs leaving to Canada - no one did. So where will so called top scientists go? Real scientists will continue their work after weeding out. But the DEI, climate, gender studies and other bottom feeders will need to pack for Europe. Or learn a trade.
Back to their home countries. I can think of about a half dozen world leading scientists I work with every day who would pack up their labs if funding dried up. They already did it once to move to the US because that is where the most funding was for these diseases. If you make the US inhospitable to these talented people, they will not think twice about finding a country that doesn't consider them "bottom feeders".
Also. Believe it or not, there are other fields than DEI/Climate/Gender studies, and when you remove the incentive to work in the US, the leaders in these other fields will leave.
When government IDs are universal, we can require them to vote.
Here's a study from about a year ago: [0].
Upshot is that 21% of Americans 18 and older don't have an ID that matches their name and address. Disenfranchising a fifth of Americans isn't something I'd accept.
Note also that it's 23% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans, and 31% of independents. You can see why Democrats are anti-ID-check while Republicans are pro-ID-check as a general rule.
I'm not from the US, but all the countries I've lived in require some form of ID. As far as I know, US is the only country in the world that doesn't. So, I have an honest question: why would you want people who don't bother to have a valid ID to vote at all? Do you expect them to be responsible people, good members of society? People who pay more in taxes than they receive from the government?
I don't know enough about US to be sure. But in any country I've lived in, the answer would be no.
Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50. There’s a long history of poll taxes used for voting suppression in the US, so any kind of pay-to-vote concept is tough. (The easy answer, of course, is to make ID issuance free.)
Then there’s the issue that states have widely different levels of competence regarding ID issuance. The REAL ID Act [0] required states to start issuing IDs based on more robust requirements by 2008. That deadline has been delayed through 2025, and is likely to get pushed back again.
When I lived in Kentucky (stereotypically poor and rural), there was a major issue that birth certificates were handwritten and never digitized, and existing driver’s licenses had been issued based on what you claimed your name was. When they started validating birth certificates as a part of REAL ID, people ran into issues when the name they had been using for their whole life didn’t match what was handwritten on their birth certificate.
Basically, identity documents are local (and often hyper-local; my own birth certificate is certified by my county, not even my state). Dragging the whole country into something resembling modernity is a major project that will exclude big chunks of people that are otherwise “responsible”.
Making the right to vote dependent on that whole system happening to work out OK for you just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
> Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50.
That doesn't sound that expensive at all. It's actually on par with other countries across the world, if you account for difference in average income. I wouldn't want a person who doesn't have $50 for a proper ID to be able to vote anyway.
However, I agree that (1) tying id to driving is weird, and (2) random circumstances completely out of your control should not stop you from voting.
I am totally fine with disenfranchising people who don't have up to date IDs. The cost of a perception of illegal ballot stuffing is high and the benefit of these voters is marginal at best.
