myrmidon

32 ms·

511.
by myrmidon 1y ago
What exactly do you mean by "deindustrialization" here? What would the opposite have looked like?
512.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Trajan (the font) was basically made for you. Pretty good looking, too.
513.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I do agree that sidestepping income taxes is too easy in the first place, but that is on legislators, too (and lowering those top tax brackets is just unhelpful in any case). I find the notion that you should pay less tax on capital gains
514.
by myrmidon 1y ago
It seems clear to me that something needs to be done if we want to avoid growing wealth/income inequality pretty much globally. Wealth tax is just one approach, but even top income tax rates used to be much higher in the US, and yo
515.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Why do you want to eat bugs?
516.
by myrmidon 1y ago
You can make a good argument that a state forcefully resettling ethnicities is a form of genocide (the Nazis did that , too, e.g. with german speaking northern Italian minorities). But comparing that with the holocaust is just disrespectfu
517.
by myrmidon 1y ago
There is zero reason to assume that fusion power will ever be the cheapest source of energy. At the very least, you have to deal with a sizeable vacuum chamber, big magnets to control the plasma and massive neutron flux (turning your fusi
518.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I don't think mandatory conscription/press-gangs are anywhere close to murder/rape of civilians (which there are well-documented cases on the Palestinian and Russian side). Pressing young men into military service is not even
519.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Israel is facing a ton of backlash for the latest conflict too (even from countries like Germany!). But I would argue that in the Ukraine war it is much more obvious who "good guy/bad guy" is, because you have a totalitarian
520.
by myrmidon 1y ago
This is a good point. It seems to me that Russia could've easily kept pretending to be a slightly flawed democracy, and it would've been super effective in hoodwinking "the west", but they "blew it" with obviou
521.
by myrmidon 1y ago
You could argue that Russia successfully managed to sidestep reputational damage despite neo-imperialism/warmongering in the past, specifically with the Chechen wars. I personally think this only worked out because it was easier to s
522.
by myrmidon 1y ago
You could turn the argument around and say that math must be a science because it builds on falsifiable hypotheses and makes testable predictions. In the end arguing about whether mathematics is a science or not makes no more sense than bic
523.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I'm not throwing around the Nazi analogy lightly here: Discrimination against outgroups/dissenters/opposition was basically the central domestic tenet under the Nazi Regime ("Gleichschaltung"), aiming to root out
524.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Note how the whole thread has been about cost of diesel fuel vs electricity from the start, and how I'm explicitly talking about operating costs for them. From the linked analysis you will also find that the higher price example for
525.
by myrmidon 1y ago
First: I'm not blaming US workers for being unreasonably expensive. But those higher wage levels are not just affecting a products core-labor working at the assembly line-- you'll have project managers, sales, purchasing, contract
526.
by myrmidon 1y ago
What is your threat scenario? Russia marching on EU capitals? After the showing in Ukraine I'm fairly confident that Poland alone with moderate support could put a complete stop to that. They are still growing and modernizing their l
527.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Life cycles costs are not what is being argued here, but operating costs of a battery electric bus compared to a diesel one. The electric variant is clearly significantly cheaper to operate (like my linked source shows) even taking charging
528.
by myrmidon 1y ago
> The thing is, fundamentally there is very little difference between a truck, a bus and a tank. I can see your point, but I'm not buying this argument for multiple reasons. First, if you do blanket-protectionism like this, the actu
529.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Sure, but if those $10k shipping costs get you labor at a quarter of the price, I don't think the financials ever become favorable for high-wage countries like the US (average salary in urban China is <$20k/year). Even in much
530.
by myrmidon 1y ago
Here you go: https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/financial_analys... My takeaway: No reasonable assumption exists that would make operating battery electric busses more expensive than diesel ones.
531.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I disagree with this. You are basically asking taxpayers to fund an uncompetitive (i.e. wasteful) local industry. I think that's justifiable when you have high local unemployment (making the thing a job program, really), or when you re
532.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I'm just saying that the "China cheaper because dirty, bad quality copycat products" is in my view mostly an incorrect excuse; cheap labor and (sometimes) larger scale are (for now!) Chinese advantages that people love to ign
533.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I honestly don't think there is any future for them longer term (>10y). Long distance, diesel vehicles might hold out for a bit longer than a decade, but the situation looks kinda inevitable even there to me. CO2 wise, electrifying
534.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I think labor cost alone is most plausible, especially combined with higher quantities. Average yearly salary in urban China is <$20k. Getting parity with subsidies, worker/environmental protection and regulation overhead would not
535.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I think this shows one of the downsides of trade barriers very well: You get stuck with undesirable industries (diesel bus manufacturing), binding capital and labor better used elsewhere (and you easily end up with underperforming, overpric
536.
by myrmidon 1y ago
In my view, this whole stance is completely indefensible, and it frankly shocks me every time I hear this from the progressive side of the political spectrum. You want to introduce additional discrimination at every workplace in order to
537.
by myrmidon 1y ago
The scary point is when it gets good enough that people start to like and appreciate the embedded ads...
538.
by myrmidon 1y ago
I mostly agree, but I think they are in a overall better position than most social media/messaging/video hosting platforms were over the last decades, because a significant fraction of their customers is willing to pay for this ki
539.
by myrmidon 1y ago
What I mean is that the dynamics of healthcare are not conducive for a competitive market. Compare grocery shopping: You have frequent/repeated interactions; if you always get ripped of by one shop, you can go to another. Before you go
540.
by myrmidon 1y ago
For the record: With "classical free market selfregulation" I mean something that is quite far from any civilized system. Standards of care, education of caregivers and even pricing levels to some degree are all regulated in your

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