To be fair, you can replace ""believes in climate change" with "prioritizes energy independence". I would argue the latter is a stronger motivator for China.
The alternatives to capitalism are a wide spectrum, ranging from totalitarian dictatorship (aka central planning) all the way to free markets with sensible regulations. What they all have in common is not being capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.
Unregulated capitalism does not exist anywhere on this planet, and the US is in fact quite a bureaucratic country, though less so than many others.
"putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest."
Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade, I would be surprised.
There is a lot of power outside the private sector. Every environmental or political group that sues any project does, in fact, wield a lot of power of the "veto" variety, which used to be prerogative of kings.
The wealthiest are having no problem acquiring permits for data centers. Why would they want flats when DCs are so much more profitable? Last century it was highways.
No problem? Didn't New York (the state) actually stop issuance of permits for data centers for a year or so?
Sure that you can get a permit somewhere, that is just federalism. But you may not get it where you want it, and given that data centers are now a part of the general culture war, I expect that many blue states will now attempt to regulate them out of existence, at least in urban and semi-urban areas.
Bad governance is a very hard problem to solve. We have been living in organized states for over 4000 years and various combinations of corruption and nepotism seem to be common problems regardless of the political and economic system.
The very fact that the question "Quod custodiet ipsos custodes?" (who will guard the guards themselves?) was originally formulated in Latin is an indication of how long has this been going on.
Sure but this wouldn't be an argument against capitalism, it's an argument for reform of government. If you think that regulation is extremely flawed and prone to corruption, then governmental systems including socialism and communism would be even more flawed since they are by definition more highly regulated.
> capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.
This critique doesn't make sense. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. You're actually a capitalist whether you know it or not and you agree with capitalism at a rudimentary level. Your complaint about "power in the hands of the wealthiest" is a matter of government dysfunction, not the economic system. In fact, the economic system, capitalism, is performing well in spite of the poor performance of the governmental system.
Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway which are often hailed as model countries for livability and "democratic socialist" states are highly capitalistic, and by some measures more so even than the United States.
In this chain of conversation the grandparent wrote something about the 1% destroying the planet. That's a red herring. Everyone jetting around the world taking vacation, buying bottled water, driving cars, eating cheeseburgers, you name it are doing much more actual damage than just the 1% who, while doing a disproportionate amount of climate damage (however we want to measure that) are not responsible for most of the total amount of climate damage. That's not to excuse them, of course, and as a matter of government dysfunction for example ask why luxury goods like private jets or yachts aren't taxed at a much higher rate, or perhaps aviation fuel for private use (I'm not suggesting these are good or bad policies, but just examples at the surface level).
If you want to address climate change you have to not only demand reform across the board, but make personal changes in your own life. If you are unwilling to do that, you'll find yourself in similar company, shouting from the rooftops if only we taxed the billionaires and finding nothing was done to help or fix the situation.
Private ownership of the means of production is one salient feature of capitalism, but it's not the definition. Capitalism is when capital controls everything, more-or-less.
Nope. Capitalism == private ownership of the means of production. There is no definition that exists or is taken seriously that defines capitalism in a major or minor way as a system in which "capital controls everything".
We are already burning coal for power generation, whether we like it or not. I have wondered why we don't "recycle" plastic by shoveling it into the same furnace and a) get some energy out of it, and b) solve the landfill problem. That should be carbon neutral, since burning X tons of plastic is X tons of coal we didn't burn.
At family gatherings here it's a typical argument for why there's allegedly no point separating out plastics: the recycling bin allegedly also ends up there. Nobody ever has a source for me though so take that for what it's worth, but it seems to generally be a thing
I think it is a inconsistent position that the federal government can regulate gambling but not ban it.
The Controlled Substances Act also rests on the interstate commerce clause. Can you imagine if the federal government was allowed to regulate heroin sales but not ban it?
My question wasn't so much about the contradiction between regulating & banning authority, but questioning the authority to do either in the first place. I.e. I don't understand why gambling must necessarily be considered to be inter-state. But I now think this is unrelated to the point you were trying to make.
I agree that the broad reading of the interstate commerce clause seems dubious, but the same precedent [1] underlies the controlled substance act, clean water act, violence against women act, endangered species act and a whole lot of other laws. Unless you are willing to hack away a large chunk of US law, you can't really undo that one.
[1] Wickard v. Filburn ruled that growing wheat FOR USE ON YOUR OWN FARM can be regulated as interstate commerce because otherwise that demand would tend to raise prices on a interstate grain market.
My VW has lane-keeping assist. In general I like it, because it had nudged me when I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. But one failure mode is that it can detect shadows or other artifacts that it decides are lane markers. For example, at the right time of day hanging power lines will create a smooth curved shadow line on the road surface that the car will want to follow where ever they lead. It's not strong enough to yank the wheel out of my hands, but if I were briefly holding the wheel with my knee while reaching for something, it could get messy.
Right? These lane keep assists in every car I've used have been very gentle nudges. People talking about how their car was forced into another lane by the LKA really make me question how firmly they were holding on to the wheel.
After all of their technical failures, and known cultural problems leading to them, I am astonished Boeing has the nerve to insist it is safe. Seems like they are betting the whole space business farm on astronauts not dying on the way down.
Because law & PR 101 says you should never make a statement to the effect of "so um we may have sent some people into space on a rocket we knew wasn't safe and it's going to be a bit hard to get them down safely". A statement like that can end your career Micheal.
My friend is a tax accountant. I hope I am wrong, but I am worried for her entire profession. It seems more about memorization of the massive & enormously complex tax code, and less about actual problem solving. This seems very well suited to an AI. I suspect such professions will be decimated in the near future.
Worry about your friend’s human outcomes of her profession being automated out of existence, but not for the profession of tax accounting. The less people that have to waste their lives parsing through tax code documents, the better, IMO.
Fyi decimation means reduced by 10%. The term comes from executing one in ten soldiers in a unit that refuses to follow orders.
Anyway, I'm curious how an AI would look for someone embezzling funds. There's more to the job than just memorizing calculation pipelines. I know I wouldn't use an AI accountant unless the state accepted liability for its failures.
This is a perfect example of why half the country does not trust the media, including myself. To be clear, I am not a Trump fan. But when newspapers endorse the same party for decades and write editorials like this, TV networks broadcast morning talk and late night shows making it clear who they do & don't favor, etc, I have a hard time believing they are feeding me objective data. They are partially responsible for the massive public distrust that they decry.
