> This fallacy seems to be brought up very frequently, that there are still blacksmiths; people who ride horses; people who use typewriters; even people who use fountain pens, but they don't really exist in any practical or economical sense outside of 10 years ago Portland, OR.
Did you respond with a fallacy of your own? I can only assume you’re not in or don’t have familiarity with those worlds and that has lead you to conclude they don’t exist in any practical or economical sense. It’s not difficult to look up those industries and their economic impact. Particularly horses and fountain pens. Or are you going by your own idea of practical or economical?
No, horses and fountain pens do not exist in any real sense today vs. the economic impact they once had. They are niche hobbies that could disappear tomorrow and the economy wouldn't even notice. They used to be bedrocks where the world would stop turning without them overnight if they disappeared. The folks put out of work would be a rounding error on yearly layoffs if every horse and pen was zapped out of existence tonight.
They are incredibly niche side industries largely for the pleasure of wealthy folks. Horses still have a tiny niche industrial use.
Horses might have been an overly broad claim, but I basically meant that the others aren't really viable pursuits to bet a chunk of your working life on, in terms of how likely it is that their markets exist in a practical economic sense. The equivalent in the programming world now might be rare old bank mainframes. COBOL isn't a thing you go to school to learn and expect it to be around forever, but that's just one. Times do change, but if the core skill stops being bought, except in niche circumstances, then there's no reason to pursue it, just the novelty.
Another potential goal of the war may have been to demonstrate that the USSR couldn't hope to win a conventional war against the US (the 1973 Easter offensive fielded 700-1200 tanks of various kinds, and the US destroyed 400-700 of them with trivial losses to US forces). The Soviets were using 15-20% of their economy to produce, among other military items, 4000 tanks a year, so a demonstration that the US could destroy so much without significant losses or any particular economic strain could have been shocking. If that was a real goal, though, it probably couldn't be openly discussed at the time, which would have contributed to the "why are we even there?" mood of the American people.
The US was barely treading water militarily, at enormous cost in both lives and cash. It was not progressing towards its military and political goals. That's why the US public pulled the plug.
The US could have continued to tread water for another 5 years, or another 10 years, or another 15 years, and would have lost even more men and spent even more money, and it would still have faced the same problem: there was no way to win the war. Every day that the war continued just meant more deaths and more money wasted.
In the event that someone is directly attacking Americans in America, I think you'll find that Americans are more united than it appears.
Americans culturally have seen ourselves as the "Good Guys" for the last century or so, and Good Guys imply Bad Guys. If there aren't any credible Bad Guys external to the US, Americans start thinking the Bad Guys are the rich, or the coastal elites, or flyover country, or liberals, or whatever. That's just 'cause there's no one else to be against, though; it'll pass.
Hence Trump's continual (and false) claims that the cities he's targeting are lawless and dangerous places.
The above applies to federal US military forces. The laws specifically exclude the US Coast Guard. Non-military federal forces (FBI, ICE, etc) are also excluded.
It also, in the more complicated quirk, excludes state military forces (i.e. "National Guard" units). These forces can be activated under a variety of different legal frameworks (see https://www.nationalguard.mil/Portals/31/Resources/Fact%20Sh... ), some of which allow their use for domestic police functions (Title 32 and SAD), because they're still under the command of the state governor (who can use military forces to perform domestic policing functions inside their state or a neighboring state).
There's also a special exclusion for Washington, DC, as technically the president is sort of its governor for many purposes.
Given that background, what actually happened...
- Trump activated National Guard units under Title 10 (aka federal active duty service), because this doesn't require the consent of a state's governor
- Trump then deployed these units to several cities, some with the support of Republican governors and some without the support of Democratic governors
- The administration's legal team realized performing policing functions with the above forces was on extremely shaky ground
- Therefore, they mostly claimed (loudly) that they were deploying "the military", but in actuality used them for extremely limited, non-policing purposes (picking up trash, talking to tourists, guarding federal buildings, guarding other federal agents performing law enforcement functions)
For much of NATO history, the US is NATO. The US doesn’t want it to be like that anymore because it needs to strategically shift to the other side of the world. So, the US says “What if Europe can be NATO? If we can force them to meet the GDP commitment then maybe we don’t need to worry about them too much and commit less of our own resources to this theater.” But of course people interpret this as if the US is abandoning the alliance. No, the US just has other problems to deal with in the world.
That is the rationalization, but don't be surprised if the US would not confront China at all.
The main flow of capital in the US had been going to the mil.industry, but that is not the case anymore. It is mainly surveillance tech that is receiving capital. In a very unhealthy economy, this all looks eerily pre-'30s.
The US, right now, is only threatening weak countries, they don't have the industrial power to confront China, nor do they want it. This shouldn't be a surprise, some ideologues behind this maga-project belief in an America from one pole to the other. They believe in "spheres of influence", and as such China has their own sphere of influence. A sphere of influence means a kind of colony, where natural resources, people and industry are all resources to be extracted by them. It is the Russian model, it is the model of criminal mobs, it is might makes right, it is a multi-polar world.
Meanwhile, re-industrialization projects have been scrapped, partners have been scared of, and tariffs have hit the industry that was still left in America.
Monopolists are parasites on the economy, and the US is already very weakened from that. As the Japanese said, the US is still a great power, but the throne is empty. I suspect there will be skirmishes with other "great powers" over exploitable resources like Africa, Middle East, Europe, but I don't expect the current crop to go all-in on China.
Yes, the US has always been the driving force behind NATO. It provides close to 40% of the combined military personnel, and an even higher portion of military spending.
No longer committing to defend other NATO countries, even if their military spending exceeds the target, is abandoning the alliance though. NATO is little else than that commitment.
Is that really the case for the EU? The EU doesn’t seem to foster an environment for competitive companies that can operate at the necessary scale the above listed can.
Mostly an artefact of the non-application of antitrust laws, the US selectively decided to not apply those anymore for the past 30-40 years, corporate consolidation takes hold, companies providing a service grow enormously and are allowed to swallow prominent competitors to stamp them out.
The EU has many competitive companies, I think HN is too focused on "tech" as in digital/web stuff and quite blind to other technological industries...
The opposite seems to be the case. The EU fosters really competitive markets, so large companies are really hard to emerge. There are tons of small software shops in my city alone, you can walk through the city and see ads for them in front of their houses.
Those exist in the USA as well. We have large, medium, and small software shops. You hardly ever hear about the medium or smaller ones though, you’ll find the, splattered all over the place in office parks as well as downtown (at least here in the Seattle area). It didn’t feel very different when I lived in Europe, even the large orgs were present (Google has lots of offices in Zurich and Stockholm among others, for example, and when I was in China my wife worked for a German big tech called SAP).
You probably mean Schwarz Gruppe, the owner of Lidl, and their subsidiary StackIT. Yes, they are growing. Schwarz is also building 11B€ AI data center in Lubbenau, so I fully agree with you. We will be fine without American digital services.
A "functioning market" doesn't prevent oligopolies. Oligopolies are natural and optimal (desirable) in many industries, if not most. That's where regulations come in.
You say that like scale is an inevitability. If Microsoft's offerings were unbundled into lots of smaller interoperable solutions we'd all be better off.
Yes, funnily, mutual tariffs on IT services between the EU and USA would incentivize competition, which is a good thing. Unless the EU is try incapable of doing IT right, in which case it would slow the the EU economy, but let’s assume we’ll improve on that.
It seems to be. As in most of the world, nearly everyone is divvied up between Apple and Microsoft, and use Google Search, with Wikipedia being the default place normies go for information. I know there are people who use Linux and prefer to use other search engines, but they are few and far between.
The EU has an extremely fragmented digital internal market, laws that suck for startups in most places, worse capital markets and funding mechanisms (and related laws), and doesn't have a Silicon Valley. It also underinvests in R&D and doesn't have a DARPA.
So yes, just tariffing or restricting US tech wouldn't help much. Europe "lost" that race fair and square. It needs to focus on fixing all those things.
On the other hand a lot of these startups and tech companies are a net negative for the world. Externalise problems and pollution, internalise profits. We don't want society to be only decided by those who make the most money. That's why we have those laws.
I personally don't want the EU to become the US. And Investors gambling with other people's money is what gave us the world financial crisis of 2007. No lessons were learned as usual.
I’m curious how Japan’s train network deals with these issues. That map looks like the train network in Tokyo alone. Japan’s network is also quite large, densely packed, and with very frequent trains. Despite Japan being well known for timeliness of its trains, it does have its occasional delays, but not often enough to think about.
That's always the case for through stations, I believe. However even terminus stations don't have their platforms locked to a fixed destination. Milan Central station has 24 platforms and each of them hosts multiple routes. Rome Termini has 32 platforms, same thing. You can monitor departures at this link, if you are very patient to keep track of them
> What is being friends with people other than essentially manipulating them into liking you by being likable and a good friend?
No, that’s not a friendship. That’s just a relationship built on insecurity. You can only hold up the facade for so long. Imagine manipulating a romantic interest in to liking you, or vice versa. That’s not a very nice thing to do. It never ends well.
> Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that any non-citizens who celebrated Kirk's death would be immediately deported…
> Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated on Katie Miller's podcast and in subsequent Department of Justice announcements that she intended to "target" speech against Kirk following his death as hate speech…
Since the very clear, repeatedly court-upheld, very specific wording of the 1st amendment protects free speech for anyone at all residing inside the United States (Yes, even including illegal immigrants, not to mention residents and visitors, though by voicing a politically disliked opinion they might risk becoming fast-track targets for deportation through other "formal" justifications) and also offers no legal classification for what exactly "hate speech" is, both of these lying, corrupt, inept, would-be parrots of Tinpot Trump are at least legally wrong.
It's amusing on the one hand, considering the hatred their very boss and most of the MAGA types poured on cancel culture and its notions of speech that shouldn't be allowed as hate speech, only to now reveal one more show of whining, gross hypocrisy.
On the other hand it's also deeply worrisome, to see key enforcers of federal U.S. law being so completely mendacious and cavalier about the actual legal part of their jobs in that very same territory.
Cancel culture won. Conservatives are not being hypocritical for having been against it and now for it. If your opponent is using an effective weapon and you don't also pick up that weapon, you will lose.
Yep. Imagine I punch you. You say: "Don't punch me". I punch you again. Then you punch me back. I say: "Aren't you being hypocritical? I thought you were against punching."
The path forward at this point is for the left to admit they made a mistake, apologize, and work to negotiate a new set of ground rules.
It's not about who "invented" it. It's about who started the most recent round.
We had a big discussion about cancel culture just a few years ago, where the left responded to complaints about it by saying: "cancel culture doesn't exist", "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", "free speech isn't hate speech", "you're just saying that because you're a racist/sexist/etc."
In other words: "Our ideology justifies large-scale, systematic application of public shaming for mild noncompliance with our ideology. We aren't going to stop doing this."
A lot of prominent left-wingers simply lack the moral authority to complain. What goes around comes around.
If you, specifically, were complaining about left-wing cancel culture, I'll grant you have the moral authority to complain about right-wing cancel culture as well.
> It's not about who "invented" it. It's about who started the most recent round.
Starting when? Several of the examples are quite recent; there's no point in my life where people of both political persuasions weren't boycotting or criticizing things.
> freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences
This remains entirely true. The First Amendment protects us from government-applied consequences. Being fired for being an asshole by a private employer has always been kosher. Being fired because the FCC threatens your employer with revocation of their broadcast licenses over protected speech has not.
The only one I'd consider recent is US national anthem kneeling.
I'm in my mid-30s. I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11. I have very vivid memories of progressive cancel culture during the late Obama administration and onwards. It very much was not a one-off sort of thing. It was a systematic practice which was systematically justified. The 9/11 stuff died down as 9/11 receded into the past. Progressive cancel culture only started dying down when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
I agree that progressive cancel culture was mostly not implemented with the help of the government. I agree that Brendan Carr overstepped in a way that wasn't a simple case of "tit for tat", and I think he should be fired.
On the other hand, consider Karen Attiah. If you took what she said, but replace "white men" in her statement with "black women", and imagine a white man saying it, he absolutely would've been risking his job just a few years ago. People were fired for far less.
> I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11.
Maybe you agreed with the canceling enough it wasn't noticeable; I cited two specific examples directly related to that day. It was… not a fun time to be anti-war.
I disagree with her firing, but there are no First Amendment concerns here. The Washington Post is free, under the First Amendment, to be shitty, even with regards to employment. They canceled her, as is their right, and as our ape evolutionary cousins do despite a lack of language, social media, or political parties. "I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.
>Maybe you agreed with the canceling enough it wasn't noticeable; I cited two specific examples directly related to that day. It was… not a fun time to be anti-war.
I was roughly 12 years old when Iraq was invaded. I was sitting in class staring at the clock and waiting for recess. It was a different political era from my perspective, and it feels a little disingenuous that you keep harping on it. It seems to me that there's been significant turnover in the US political power players since that time, so the hypocrisy accusations don't seem to land very well. Remember that Trump gained popularity with the GOP electorate in part due to his willingness to unequivocally condemn Bush & friends for their middle east misadventures.
>"I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.
Sure. But when explaining why they fired Attiah, the Post wrote: "the Company-wide social media policy mandates that all employee social media postings be respectful and prohibits postings that disparage people based on their race, gender, or other protected characteristics".
They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested. It appears to me that they are actually applying it in an even-handed way. If I was a journalist circa 2017, and I made a post suggesting that America was violent because of people caring too much about "black women who espouse hatred and violence", in the wake of a black women recently being murdered, then the risk of progressive dogpiling, and my subsequent termination, would've been extremely high. It's not respectful, and it disparages on the basis of protected characteristics. Remember, Al Franken lost his job (even after he apologized!) for things like squeezing a woman's waist at a party.
I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon, regardless of who is doing it to who. At least recently in the US.
> I was roughly 12 years old when Iraq was invaded. I was sitting in class staring at the clock and waiting for recess. It was a different political era from my perspective, and it feels a little disingenuous that you keep harping on it.
It's a little disingenuous to go "I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11" and "I have very vivid memories of progressive cancel culture during the late Obama administration", in that case. I, similarly, have few memories of paying for health insurance when I was in middle school.
> They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested.
Maybe! But describing him as a "white man" is accurate, as describing Obama as a "black man" would be uncontroversial. If you start talking about white/black men as monolithic groups, you start getting into trouble.
> I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon…
I am, because the people who whined incessantly about that phenomenon are now weilding governmental power to do the same thing, in a way that is clearly far less acceptable legally.
where's the room for a firm set of beliefs and moral framework, or perhaps a principled stand against or for something by this dogshit logic of yours?
The only important thing is to get them votes and followers then? The conservatives can fuck off just as hard as the radical left if that's all that matters.
So is Nazism, that doesn't mean all moral frameworks are created equal. Also, tit for tat is a type of cynical pragmatism, not a thing based on some principle (misguided or not) which is a basic requirement of a moral framework; the notion of doing something or not doing it because you feel it to be right, regardless of benefit.
well so much for a principled stand against or for something by this dogshit logic. I guess the only important thing is to cheer on whatever gets the votes, never mind how badly all things deteriorate as a result?
I'm no fan of democrat progressive culture, but if the crap you describe is what passes for a bottom line in the conservative camp, then it's garbage either way.
What does being a libertarian have to do with it? Do you take as for granted that unless you're a libertarian, you shouldn't bother with at least a few firm moral principles in your politics? That anything goes so long as it garners votes and social media "engagement"?
Republicans started cancel culture. It really gained steam in 2001 when they cancelled the Dixie Chicks for being anti-war (turns out they were right). So I guess you're right, the left adopted it after realizing they'd lose if they didn't use such an effective weapon against fascists.
Is that supposed to be a problem or a counter point or something? It doesn't matter what ideological whims someone is espousing, people who hold discretionary authority backed by government violence ought to keep it in their pants.
> people who hold discretionary authority backed by government violence ought to keep it in their pants
That applies to violating the out-of-classroom First Amendment rights of publicly employed teachers by their publicly employed management at the urging of the federal government, too.
"The Court famously opined, 'It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.'"
If an entry level commissioned officer can be expected to keep it in their pants than an entry level teacher can too.
Yeah it's a first amendment issue depending on where through the gray area the line is drawn but the .gov runs right through the gray areas of violating rights all the time, I don't really see the big deal if it does it to it's own cogs.
> non-political government office holders ought to not weigh in on politics
They have the clear First Amendment right to do so on their own time.
I mean, I hold the opinion that people "ought not to" be fans of Charlie Kirk. But you'd correctly object if I enforced that opinion with government power.
> Before your ilk became dominant in public discourse…
>They have the clear First Amendment right to do so on their own time.
They don't have a right to a government job.
Are you fine with CPS employees espousing absurd opinions about the fitness of homosexuals to be parents? Because that's the door this opens. Think a few steps ahead.
If you wanna spew politics and keep your LEO or teaching job get elected sheriff or school board.
They have a right not to be fired from their government job for espousing constitutionally protected speech that doesn't affect their duties. (As affirmed by the Supreme Court, regularly!)
> Are you fine with CPS employees espousing absurd opinions about the fitness of homosexuals to be parents?
No, but "I hate a significant portion of the population in a way that directly relates to my job" and "I didn't like this one specific guy that has nothing to do with my job" are… substantially different things.
Very interesting. I stand corrected. I will note, however, that this is literally the only example I've seen of someone getting fired for a legitimately non-celebratory remark. We've got a legal system for stuff like that. For every single example you could give me, I can give you at least a thousand counterexamples. 99.9% of all the folks being fired are getting fired for being reprehensible.
Eh, that one is worse than the first, and while not "celebratory", certainly shows a lack of judgement and character. I'd fire someone for this, too. This has less to do with free speech and more to do with revealing yourself to be an insensitive asshole.
The man was murdered in front of his children, and this woman's instinct is defamation of character. She's continuing to repeat the lie that Charlie Kirk "excused the deaths of children in the name of the Second Amendment".
The immediate aftermath of someone's death is not the time to critique them, gently or not. Total lack of decorum and social sense. Not fit to teach young children.
There is… little disagreement on this aspect of the First/Fourth/Fifth/etc., though.
> revoking their visa is not jail
The First Amendment protects you from non-jail government consequences just fine, for obvious reasons - "we're fining you $1M for your speech" would have just as much impact.
The first amendment should only apply to citizens. I understand that current case law says it applies to everyone, but I think that is a misstep that we can & should correct.
I agree with you. I get tired of people complaining about "cancel culture" and the reactions of private individuals and groups to the opinions and actions of other private individuals and groups. People have the right to say what they want and to do what they want up to the limits of causing harm to others. They can shout their inflammatory opinions from the roof tops. They can boycott and petition to try to convince private groups from giving platform to opinions or people they don't like. All of that is protected speech.
This current executive branch is weighing in and using its influence to try to control speech. It's not "you'll get disappeared by secret police for what you told your coworker in confidence" levels of control, but that it's happening at all is alarming. I worry that they have no problem trampling on the first amendment and that it seems like no part of the government is going to restrict them from it.
Censorship in oppressive countries is often not carried out directly by the government. Instead, to save face, it is enforced along invisible power lines. The government gives a silent nod to other actors in society nudging them to act accordingly. For example, an Eastern Bloc citizen might not receive a formal penalty for leaving the communist party, but their children's admission to university could suddenly become more difficult, of course without any official acknowledgment of the fact.
> I prefer advice from someone currently living life, learning and adjusting and growing now... not at the end when it doesn't matter.
He spent time to think about what he's learned and decided to put it in writing at 94 years old. He seems to still be avid reader at his age. He still thinks about ideas of living a fulfilling life. It seems to me he's still currently living life, learning and adjusting and growing now. There may even be a lesson there to having a long life: It always matters. What do you consider the end?
There are only disadvantages for the US to skew stats and data since much of the global economy depends on it. Whereas it’s advantageous for China to skew stats and data for the time being as it rises to be a peer adversary militarily and economically.
Did you respond with a fallacy of your own? I can only assume you’re not in or don’t have familiarity with those worlds and that has lead you to conclude they don’t exist in any practical or economical sense. It’s not difficult to look up those industries and their economic impact. Particularly horses and fountain pens. Or are you going by your own idea of practical or economical?
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