Unfortunately - the widespread propaganda seen around both nuclear power plants and datacenters is ultimately going to cost America everything - the American way of life our child’s will inherit is going to mean something very different than what it meant for us.
China controls 90-99% of the rare earths - which are necessary for everything from cars to defense, chips, energy and even construction steel;
China controls 70%+ of critical minerals (99% of galium/magnesium, 85% tungsten, etc, etc).
China owns the world’s manufacturing - with the associated skilled tradesmen (hard to produce anything fully locally - the experts are retired / passed already).
China has abundance of power and energy.
China has got both power, energy, and they’ve got the will.
China has got the best intelligence models today (as of this month) - which means scientific superiority, increased productivity, and military superiority.
What does America have, and what does that mean for our economy in the coming 20-40 years?
The reality is that we are in a new race to intelligence and re-industrialization, but we seem to be anti-everything at this point. Nobody wants to hear it, I know I am going to get downvoted to hell with this, but this is ultimately the new reality, and our eternal debating / 4-years cycles vs. life-long strategies in China, is going to cost America everything.
Go ahead and go live next to one then and show us how it's nothing but propaganda.
Quite convenient how the same people trying to run roughshod over the others to get these bubble mania mausoleums built NEVER live near them but are HAPPY to make others who can't afford a second home live next to them.
>the American way of life our child’s will inherit is going to mean something very different than what it meant for us.
I'm fairly certain the American way of life is exactly what happened here, that citizens of a locality exercise the rights over their land to stop random tech bros from ruling over them with their AI and China mania. I recommend John Quincy Adams 4th of July 1821
Really? You think the American way of life today is comparable to 1821?
You think the standard of life you enjoy today is because of the triumph of local parochialism?
The United States has always been ruled by elites [1].
The revolution was in large part kicked off because the Proclamation of 1763 rendered the westward land investments of the wealthy worthless [2].
Why would reading 1821 July 4th propaganda be instructive? How about you open up a basic economics textbook and then work your way back to the standard of life you've come to expect and get back to us.
>You think the standard of life you enjoy today is because of the triumph of local parochialism?
My standard of life involves democracy and self-determination. Americans are 'pathetic' about that because it turns out at the end of the day liberty is a bit more durable of an idea than buying yet another pile of junk.
If you think you can just throw fortune cookie economic slogans at people to convince them they want to live in Mark Zuckerbergs or Elon's Borg cube you're in for a few rough decades, on both sides of the political spectrum that is.
>He's so evil but the vast majority of Americans can't give up his products? Is he forcing people to login to Instagram or Facebook?
People are perfectly fine with him making products, what they aren't fine with is he (and his peers) starting to think they're kings and trying to overrule the citizens of a state he doesn't live in. If it comes down to a chatbot and the latter they'll chose the latter. The datacenter opposition, of which there are by the way hundreds at this point across the country generally attract 70/30 if not higher majorities.
I'm also not sure what I'm not supposed to support in those paragraphs because, as to your point about inflation, that is currently the consequence of America's ongoing military action in the world, as unpopular as the datacenters, and as the founders were fond to point out the reason for ever more higher levels of taxation, increased state size and lower prosperity. As true today as it was back then.
The modern American standard of life is based on global integration and state power.
If you want to go back to some Garden of Eden fiction regarding Plymouth Rock based on the propagandizing of America's first nepo president you will not find much competition in your pursuit of a life of poverty and subsistence farming. Go log off and enjoy the woods.
Or get serious and propose a plan for continued American economic dominance and standard of life in a world where data centers are demonized, when the economic engine of the future is compute.
>The modern American standard of life is based on global integration
The United States is virtually the least trade dependent country in the world[1] which is why you frequently see American governments wield trade policy as a weapon. Economically the US is practically self sufficient.
And insofar as the broad prosperity and provision of good jobs is concerned, those haven't improved in the computer age, they've been decimated, outsourced, and now threaten to be replaced by the very same data centers ordinary people are protesting. The explicit and stated goal by the people we have been talking about is not to increase the autonomy of the average person, it's to automate them away and put them on basic income.
What complicity in such evil does a user of his products face, if any? Are most people evil then? If not, what excuse for them can you offer that does not rob them of their human agency? Or do you agree with another commenter that all users of his products are necessarily zombies?
Speaking of such creatures: If someone trolls you on his platform, is that his fault too? What conduct should he control on such a wide platform? What should he not? Is an oversight in said control, in either direction, tantamount to the guilt of conducting the act in question itself?
Is your version of the dead internet theory that Mark Zuckerberg authors all posts on Facebook? Do you have any answers? Or do you offer only scapegoats?
I guess you did answer one question - you have no answers, only scapegoats.
I don't do it for "Zuckenberg". I don't really care about him at all. I assume if he didn't exist, someone else would have invented the same thing. After all, he basically ripped off the idea to start with. I do it because imo worse than dealing with obvious capitalist self interest that one can at least model and bound is dealing with people like you who treat themselves as some constituent of a crowd of pitchfork bearers rather than a serious civic participant. Irrational, virtue signaling outrage that I doubt you really even believe in or actually care about. Because what else are you doing about it? On your notion of "complicit" you might as well direct the same invective at your local gas station. I'm sure you will be able to find a relevant laundry list of perceived crimes.
Why don't you go through all those questions in order and actually attempt an answer? Or if the answers are so obvious and I'm such a troll, why has no one built a social network of comparable scale that avoids all these problems? Does the existence of Zuckerberg somehow preclude such a thing from ever existing? Is this another one of his malevolent powers?
Good thing our founders had the foresight to know the greatest check of all is on the people, so as to never let a mob establish guilt or innocence.
By all means, propose sensible social media regulation. If you can even conceive of such a thing. You sound like someone who has no idea what it is like to find yourself before some tribunal, some body with the power to judge human conduct as being "complicit" in some crime. The entire history of the West might be most optimistically summarized as endeavoring to hold such tribunals to the highest standards of objectivity and veracity. Have a nice day buddy.
>Is he forcing people to login to Instagram or Facebook?
Yes. The "no one is putting a gun to users' heads" argument is irrelevant when it comes a trillion-dollar company invested in behavioral modeling deliberately driving engagement.
"Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users" (2018)
You get to strip hundreds of millions of people of individual agency on the basis of your stumbling through a handful of headlines, all adhering to the recent trend of reducing human conduct into some neat pathology.
What does this portend for your politics? How to manage this vast polity of addicts? What regime of involuntary commitment will you come up with to force virtue into those that have slipped into this addictive vice?
Maybe while you're at it you can repeal the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. After all, surely this is what John Quincy Adams was after as he expounded upon the nature of American freedom in such flowery terms. The power to moralize over your fellow man, too feeble to resist the likes of fermentation, Facebook or the fruit.
China controls 90-99% of the rare earths - which are necessary for everything from cars to defense, chips, energy and even construction steel;
China controls 70%+ of critical minerals (99% of galium/magnesium, 85% tungsten, etc, etc).
China owns the world’s manufacturing - with the associated skilled tradesmen (hard to produce anything fully locally - the experts are retired / passed already).
China has abundance of power and energy.
China has got both power, energy, and they’ve got the will.
China has got the best intelligence models today (as of this month) - which means scientific superiority, increased productivity, and military superiority.
What does America have, and what does that mean for our economy in the coming 20-40 years?
The reality is that we are in a new race to intelligence and re-industrialization, but we seem to be anti-everything at this point. Nobody wants to hear it, I know I am going to get downvoted to hell with this, but this is ultimately the new reality, and our eternal debating / 4-years cycles vs. life-long strategies in China, is going to cost America everything.