> A completely theoretical pro-business political body would remove any and all obstacles to business: environmental regulations, labour protection, taxation, financial oversight, so on and so forth, I believe we can agree that such move would be detrimental to society at large while making businesses extremely rich, right?
This assumes that all obstacles and regulations are to the benefit of the environment and people and that the regulation results in intended consequences.
In modern western countries regulation is very often ideological and actively harms the populace and economy. Case in point Germany and their green and anti nuclear hysteria, which resulted in total reliance on coal.
Which is why I exactly pointed out that "finding the line" should be a iterative process, it's just natural the pendulum will swing for correcting past mistakes.
I don't know why you assumed I'm stating as if finding where these regulations lie to be a static thing, I thought I left a lot of nuance so this tired line wouldn't be played against the core of my argument... I didn't assume the current regulations are perfect, nor that there can be a perfect line, but that the process of finding this should exist, and that the answer will never lie in either extreme.
Hope it's even clearer now.
Edit: and also, "ideological" is a non-sequitur, even the criticism of it as you've done is ideological in nature...
Thought-terminating clichés are quite boring, and don't foster any discussion, I'd like to see more thought instead so curiosity could live and perhaps this comment thread could go somewhere where we both give into each other's argument but alas seems it's not possible to extract that from you, only tiresome one-liner platitudes.
It is sad though, this is the kind of discussion I do enjoy having with clever people.
Who kicked out whom? I might be missing some context here, to me it were tech bosses who turned to Trump after he won or after it was clear he was about to win.
Democrats turned on Elon during covid, as he was against lockdowns. This spread into wide distrust and complete sidelining and antagonism towards tech during the Biden administration. You can hear about it from Ben and Marc on their a16z podcast, when they explained why they are endorsing Trump.
This was despite the tech community being predominantly democrats. They turned to Trump, because the democrats shut them out completely and in some cases were highly antagonistic (crypto and elon companies).
> Democrats turned on Elon during covid, as he was against lockdowns. This spread into wide distrust and complete sidelining and antagonism towards tech during the Biden administration. You can hear about it from Ben and Marc on their a16z podcast, when they explained why they are endorsing Trump.
Look, a16z basically are talking their book. They went heavily into crypto, and when the Biden administration started taking actions against crypto, they started supporting Republicans.
Who said it was complicated? The biden administration also had plans for the AI industry which would kill them. They also had zero interest in any new tech (smr, vtol). The democrats turned against big tech and new tech.
> The democrats turned against big tech and new tech.
While I didn't agree with a lot of the governmental responses to ChatGPT (the bowlderising of the EU AI act is my personal lowlight), I think that a lot of what the Biden admin was against was monopolies, which I entirely agree with.
It's super dangerous (as an example) that basically 3 companies now control all online advertising, and another 3 have a monopoly on renting servers. This is bad for markets and society so I was mostly onboard with a lot of what they did (and am very disappointed in the results of the trials, particularly the Google ones).
I don't think this is anti-tech, it's anti-monopoly which I think is really good for basically everyone here over the longer term.
That being said, a16z were totally just trying to make sure they had time to unload all their crypto "investments" to another sucker.
You are just playing a word game. The democrats are the left in the political arena of the US. If they are not what the left would be in some other country or what someone thinks the left should be is meaningless.
The left also specifically turned against AI, big tech and data center build out. They would be crazy not to go all in on the republican party just like Elon did.
> they are key objectives for the European security strategy to remove dependence on foreign tyrants and dictators.
Lol european security strategy? We switched from Russian dependence, to a more expensive US dependence. While also being strongly dependent on middle eastern gas and oil. What the hell kind of strategy is that?
> We switched from Russian dependence, to a more expensive US dependence
To be fair, most of us believed the US to be a reliable partner, based on previous track record, but things like that change quickly. So we thought we were changing something cheaper from a hostile entity, to something more expensive from an ally, but turns it we got it wrong, so new direction now.
The repeated failing of the EU (90s+) was under-appreciation of the economic / political / military pressure that could be brought by constraining key material and energy supplies.
If the EU (specifically Germany) had more presciently modeled out Russian foreign policy with a shift to increased EU reliance on Russian natural gas, there were steps it could have taken.
E.g. building in a tripwire for territorial invasion with the express responses of cutting Russian gas purchases on day 1, freezing Russian assets and access to European banking, and building storage / LNG terminals
Had the EU done this, loudly, Ukraine likely wouldn't have been invaded.
The EU's biggest mistake was presuming that everyone took the international order as inviolate as it did. (China, Russia, the US)
Yeah the EU got it wrong. Like they did for pretty much every policy of the last 20 years.
edit: Since I can no longer repy I will edit in place:
Just the kind of regulation that drives out investment and growth. Now we have no money printing tech giants and our best and brightest work for US companies. But we do have bragging rights with the desktop linux crowd, so that is something.
Yup, clearly making websites and platforms responsible for the data they store and process is absolutely horrible. How is one supposed to make money on selling user data if I have to give notice to the users that this is what I'm doing? Give me laissez faire markets or no market at all!
Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.
edit: I cant reply so I will edit.
The policies are clearly insanity because EU industrial self immolation does nothing for the rest of the world. Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment? They sure as hell do not. Most of them throw their trash directly into the ocean. All we do in europe is self harm while the broad problem goes entirely unsolved. How the hell are you going to develop and sell new technology, while destroying our economies at the same time. Complete pipe dream insanity.
> Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.
That's not true, but ok...
> Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment?
Actually, they do. China is the biggest spender on investing in renewable energy-sources and moving away from fossil fuels. Africa and South America are continents, not Countries. And not sure why India or Indonesia are related here?
Other than that, I'm not sure if you are a troll, victim of poor sources or paid actor, but your quality of data really sucks.
Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places. What exactly am I wrong on? China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.
> Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places.
That's actually a bit disputed. But ok, it wasn't just really obvious from your writing what you meant here.
> China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.
Yes, and no. China is moving away from coal, they reduced their share by 20% in the last decades. It's now around 57% of their total usage. The number of new coal plants is also a bit disputed. First, they modernize many coal plants by building new, more efficient ones, and shutting down the old plants. Second, they are building many backup-plants, which are not really used outside of emergencies, which does happen from time to time it seems. And third, they are master of overplanning. Around 80% of their planned coal-plants were actually cancelled in the last years before the building started for real. This seems related to how their local and federal levels are handling budgets.
The only real problem is that their absolute coal consumption is still growing, because their consumption as a whole is growing. But long-term, there is likely a point where it's reaching its peak, and start shrinking. And speculation is here, that we are talking about ~10 years, not 50. So at that point, China, which is already producing for the whole world, will have acquired another good selling point which European countries have to beat.
What does plastic pollution have to do with carbon emissions?
China's coal usage is dropping every year. They build new coal plants to replace older ones, or leave them idle. Almost 90% of their new energy comes from solar power.
Please stop spreading fossil fuel industry lies here.
Insanity or opportunity? Like, the climate is already messed up, if we want to maintain our species standard of living then we need to move towards a society that emits much much less carbon.
If we don't then we'll either go extinct or regress to a level where we use less. Sure, it's gonna really really suck for the next while but there isn't really any other options.
As a benefit, if we do this then we can sell the technology to the rest of the world.
Well I didn't say they wouldn't cooperate (very likely they would cave to any national security letter), I said there's no way they'd end up in jail. Politicians want their donations.
Brits, Dutch, Belgium, Northern Germany. They all have this incredibly outdated building style that they refuse to change. Bricks with no insulation. I live 1000km to the south of them and it is pretty standard for us to have tripple pane windows and thick insulation on our houses. But they for some reason prefer to live in cold houses during the winter and overheated houses during the summer.
I have had multiple conversations with people who lived a while in that area. Rich, educated countries, modern economies, but they live like they are poor farmers in the 19th century.
Purely anecdotal, but every house I have ever visited in the Netherlands and Scandinavia has been properly heated and above all insulated. Which is absolutely not the case for the UK and even less so for France and countries further "south". If you want to be cold indoors in Europe, spend a winter in Spain, Portugal, Italy or Greece. Here I speak with some experience.
This has not been true for at least a decade for dutch buildings: there are strict regulations requiring decent insulation for new buildings. Renovating and insulating old buildings is also encouraged, but not required by law.
Insulating old buildings and especially appartment buildings is very common over here. There the amount of uninsulated buildings is so much higher. Every time I am in that part of Europe I am appalled at the energy waste.
British building regs literally require insulation? It is not a law that old builds have to be brought up to code, but there were government schemes where you got free loft and cavity wall insulation in old houses.
I think the buildings really are that old - you can't legally build new ones like that in the EU afaik. No idea about Britain, but yeah, I lived there in a flat like that, it was over 100 years old.
Obama deported way more than Trump does and no one complained. Why is that so? Or at least the complaints were not nearly on the level they are now. The actual anomaly is the Biden era.
I'd like to know of any countries where a foreigner can be there without a valid visa/authorization and not be summarily deported if they are discovered.
In Germany we have a thing called tolleration [0]. It actually covers quite a few people, because quite a few people seek asylum because legal immigrantion is often dysfunctional. The difference maybe is that it is difficult in Germany to be employed or take part in life without any formal registration. Deportation is often difficult because it needs to be safe and the country of origin has to cooperate. Because Germany only has EU borders, pushing people beyond its border is pretty pointless once they have settled (they typically return within a few days). But we also have over night deportations of families (children having grown up in Germany, people having jobs) with police raids in some cases, that leave people traumatized.
The issue isn't with the deportations -- it's actually with the change in tactic, and a lot of the extrajudicial behavior. Immigration is an absolute mess, and it's one we created ourselves with one bad policy after another. I'd recommend "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here" to understand the 50+ year history of how American military and political involvement in Latin America created the instability which caused the refugee crisis -- and even created the cultural phenomena that resulted in the creation of MS13.
Change in tactics? This is as violent as it gets, the migrants being turned into slaves (paid $1 per day) while awaiting deportation, living in the worst possible conditions, possibly worse than jails.
It was common, on the left (i.e., not Liberals and not so-called Democrats), to call Obama, the "Deporter in Chief".
Democratic voters always circle the wagons to protect the administration, regardless of the administration's actions, when one of their own is POTUS. The Republican voters do the exact same thing.
This assumes that all obstacles and regulations are to the benefit of the environment and people and that the regulation results in intended consequences.
In modern western countries regulation is very often ideological and actively harms the populace and economy. Case in point Germany and their green and anti nuclear hysteria, which resulted in total reliance on coal.
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