u/avidamoeba — Avid Amoeba

I didn't have Chinese robotaxis driving for Uber in my bingo card.

Hm. I guess that makws sense. So the Russians are in a better position technologically while probably weaker in manpower than in the beginning of the war. But the tech could probably offset that. Economically they're probably overall benefitting from shifting directly to Chinese products that have much lower profit margins than what they used to pay for European and US goods that flooded in after 1991. So their PPP ratio is probably rising. Would be interesting to see if that's borne out in data. If they're able to make more missiles, drones and such for less, in a sustainable fashion, then I guess there is a reason for building up deterrent manufacturing in the EU to counter it.

I don't know. Honestly probably nothing. I think the commies rightfully see EU and US capitalist democracies as being one bad election away from fascism and for a good reason. Examining the trajectories of our politoeconomic systems, we have been on that trend for a long time now. We're not doing anything meaningful to stop it. So from their perspective, they understand that our capitalist systems are unsustainable and they understand the right ideologues are diametrically opposed to socialism around the world and have used military and economic force against it in the 20th century. I'm pretty sure they see this happening again, aimed at them and they would need to be able to protect themselves. Having a gas station or two that are isolated from the rest of the world is a great asset in this scenario. So I think the best we could do is getting Russia to agree to some compromise which would most likely include significant land loss for Ukraine. Unless there's a military solution that someone is willing and able to fight. Maybe if the US goes full in weapons supply to Ukraine. Don't know.

Too many things masquerading as centrist these days.

Why would they stop supporting Russia? China has been under economic attack by the US for three administrations now and the US has been encircling them with military bases. The EU hasn't helped. From Chinese perspective, their sovereignty is not assured and it's doubtful that the EU or the US would demonstrate new friendship if they stopped supporting Russia. In that case, throwing one of their main sources of fossil fuels and a giant buffer under the bus doesn't seem like a good proposition. In a war scenario with the US, the oil shipments from the Gulf are likely to stop one way or another which makes Russian fossil fuels that much more important.

Doubtful as losing Russia means they lose one of their sources of cheap fossil fuels, decreasing their redundancy and increasing input costs across China. The material gain they have in Taiwan is TSMC. However they can replicate that given time, and they can function without sub-7nm silicon till then. Meanwhile they would have major trouble if their fossil inputs increase in price significantly. I think Taiwan is more of a political goal and a long term at that.

Leftist parties who won the most seats during the last election, saving the country from a Le Pen government. An election *he* triggered. And then he did what @povoq@slrpnk.net described.

Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't the EU part of NATO have halted Russia's "special military operation" in the very beginning, if they had actually decided to go in Ukraine? I seem to recall they didn't want to go in because of various reasons, but I don't think lack of military capability was one of them. Instead they decided to trickle in weapons as to "not be involved." Did anything of significance change so that Europe is suddenly super weak militarily against Russia? I guess Europe is weak against the US, but that's not quite the framing used.

Or perhaps replace the leadership that fucked up. Defunding the public broadcaster would likely result in more power to pro-Israeli capital over media, not less.

How many times have we watched this movie? At this point these ceasefire negotiations feel more like hasbara than actual attempts to stop the killing.

Oh wow, they actually wrote this title. 😯

Private companies typically also distribute ownership via shares to people who are therefore shareholders. They're just not traded publicly. AFAIK only firms owned by a handful of people might use a different scheme, depending on the jurisdiction.

Lidl is better for Lidl's shareholders and Aldi's better for Aldi's shareholders.

Or join the US as the CHERISHED 51st STATE, and then the smoke would be AMERICAN smoke and ket me tell you - don't we love american smoke!

These can't shoot down F35, can they?

Yes. Of course what you said could happen. My point is that in the current status quo there's still plenty of non-authoritarian countries and billionaires are still operating on easy-to-jump-ship basis when they destroy one democracy or another for increased profit. So I think that's why this cost isn't factored in. Competition for increased profits dominates. If we're left with only a few democracies that tolerate billionaires, then that calculus could change. It's similar to capitalism's treatment of any finite resource - plunder that *removed* till there's nothing left, then deal with the consequences. If we don't, the other guy would do it and we'd lose on the profit, and the other guy gains power over us given by the newly acquired capital.

Yes, of course.

Right but how do you make most countries want to arrest them? We currently don't have a setup allowing for this if no international criminal offenses are involved. It only happens if the billionaire resides mostly in an "authoritarian" country where they could get "arbitrarily" arrested. The rest of the world isn't currently setup to do this. I'm not saying it can't be setup or shouldn't be setup like that.

Smaller scale millionaires perhaps. Once they go multinational, it becomes very difficult to significantly harm them even if one country decides to dispossess their business. This has already happened to large corporations that exist today through nationalization at various places and points in time. E.g. Shell after Venezuelan oil nationalization.

Not if you have a loyal, competent police apparatus to round up anyone who dares to step out of line.