it takes at least 20 years to build a nuclear power plant and it takes another 20 to build it back. it costs a multitude of resources and money to build, maintain and tear down compared to renewables.
nuclear has its role currently but it's not the future.
What I'm wondering these last few years is whether American "politics" has anything actually political to discuss like ensuring the pension system is still intact in 30 years, improving access to a solid education (and even more so: what does that mean?), drug prevention, transparent election processes, tax and debt management... Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI ... stuff that you could bicker over after all the actual politics were decided upon.
Is there actual politics? Or is it all for show?
(This is relevant to corruption because I think a populace is a lot more receptive to ignoring corruption if the politics is emotionalised and people are entrenched and you don't talk about stuff that actually would benefit you but you have to decide on how to act on it)
It doesn't event attempt to address any of those issues or anything real. American politics is all about keeping the working class distracted and pointing fingers at each other while the ownership class rapes (literally) and pillages.
Yes, there is a lot of "actual politics". For instance, the Protect College Sports Act is currently being intensely debated. It centers on the idea of amateurism in college athletics and what that means for things like college football and the Olympic sports. Americans love dominating the world at the Olympics every few years and that's because of the NCAA and college athletes, so people care about it.
> Over here in Europe you only hear about "US politics" like guns and cars or DEI
This is because Europe, and everyone else in the western world, is obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.
> This is because Europe, and everyone else in the western world, is obsessed with the United States and obsessed with Americans.
Either you're an American which would prove the "most Americans are ignorant about their imperialism and their own militarized society" or you aren't and aren't watching that many news the last 10 years... either way that's not a very... thoughtful comment.
Protect College Sports Act not even on the radar for most people.
It's wild that a law that is more or less transparently about limiting player pay for their participation in a blatantly commercial activity gets cheered on by "fans".
It's clear that you don't even know what the act is about since it has very little to do with paying players. That has already been explicitly allowed.
It's about the prevention of forming mega conferences and funneling all the money and talent to the top.
Judging from your response, if you actually knew what the PCSA was you would probably support it.
Why should the money get spread around? It's a business, pay the people that earn it.
I understand what is in it and wouldn't take any of it as long as it is combined with caps on player pay. Where's the cap on media revenues or stadium ticket prices?
There is an antitrust exemption and a direct cap on school to athlete payments. Sure, third parties that aren't associated entities can still make payments to players, but its transparently the intent to lower the share of revenue going to the players.
> Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
> The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
There arent any real politics by design. Most people in this country agree on most issues, those issues are the things that you will never hear or see mentioned by any party politician.
The parties only maintain their power by making you vote against your own interests they do this by playing parties off each other. They pick the most divisive topics they can and they run on that. They will run polls to learn what people disagree about the most, like abortion. Then they will run the entire election on abortion. So the democratic candidate says you get abortion up until the week after birth which is literal baby murder which no sane democrat actually supports but it enrages republicans and makes them want to vote against the dems so the reps run someone the exact opposite and run on banning abortion entirely which is mostly supported by the extremely religious. So now instead of voting on numbers and plans and policy your voting entirely on emotion and fear and you have to choose between killing babies and the handmaids tale.
Party politics is designed to force every election into these awful games of would you rather instead of thinking about options and then choosing the best one.
All we have to do is put country above political party but thats asking way too much of your average american who actually believes in all the silly scripted political theater nonsense. If your an american and you only blame one party then your not just part of the problem but the whole entire problem. Your the girl who always cries about her abusive ex but absolutely refuses to leave them.
And i get it i totally do, your party is very good at saying exactly what you want to hear and when they tell you next time will be different you really want to believe. When they blame the other party you really want to believe and give them another chance.
Maybe your party actually does some things that you like. I just dont think its worth selling out the entire country for the crumbs they toss out.
>So the democratic candidate says you get abortion up until the week after birth
I see you're trying to illustrate your point with an example, but in this case, no politician in history has ever proposed something like that, which makes it hard to take the rest of your comment seriously.
there are other factors at play like AMOC halting and breakdown of habitats that are codependent with other habitats. you dont get to pick and choose regions since earth is a huge interconnected system itself.
stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.
I recently read capitalist realism by Fisher, and I think it is impossible (or very close to it, barring major war/plague/thanos snap) for something like degrowth to be seriously considered. There are simply waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to many incentives at multiple levels and across traditional alliances against it.
the question is how europe and the us will manage degrowth. atm europe is ahead while the us is acting like a spoilt child calling for more cars and ac.
Why are we missing the point here: LLMs are of major geopolitical significance. Autonomous drones kill children, now what? Would you rather have a home grown frontier model capability to defend yourself? Or would you prefer to rely on the good graces of tech CEOs?
I think the EU would prefer wars not happen and that they never have to think about defending their borders or themselves. This is fantasy land, but the cafes and museums and old city squares are gorgeous.
This polemic is quite sad. Wars are only cool in movies. And - apparently - in US politics. The reason the EU shirks talking about war is because it actually lived through it. And it wasn't cool.
The US is waging wars far from their borders (of which they all lost since about 50 years) while the topic in the EU is self defence within their borders, that's a different ball game.
A third of the US economy is propped up by waging wars. That's not even being imperialistic that's just a very costly and damaging social service program that costs a lot of lives.
This does not make sense. How can you differentiate between "good" migrants (apparently you yourself) and "bad" ones? Shouldn't you remove yourself because you're a migrant to increase the quality of life for the "natives"?
It makes perfect sense. Differentiating between a good and bad ones is the easiest thing ever.
1. Are they a net benefit to the country's finances? Do they pay more than enough taxes to cover the public services they use and then some. Or are they just a leech on the welfare system and a burden to society in general.
2. Do they integrate well into the society? Do they commit crimes?
3. To whom is their allegeince? The society they live in or the one back home? Do they promote the interests of their own ethnic group at the expense of the natives?
The first two are already available to state, tax, crime, welfare records. The third can be found out with a simple investigation.
1. As long as these are measured they are not a problem: Switzerland - and most of the EU countries - do simply not have a problem with poor people leeching the welfare systems, but rich people not paying their share: tax evasion by the rich is a problem going into the billions while social security fraud is around millions.
2. That's also measurable by crime stats and Switzerland is really tough in re-patriating people that broke the law.
3. That is something you cannot measure and where you cannot guarantee freedom or fairness in a society. What if I were to deem you too stupid to vote because you're advocating for a fascist mindset that might overthrow the democratic fundamentals? You wouldn't want that, I suppose.
So there's nothing to be done that's not already been done.
And to the fallacy of my argument you are hinting at, it truly is one of the difficulties. I think as a migrant your contribution should be to assimilate and assist with the country's interests. You must not be a freeloader. If the country wants to get rid of migrants, then thats it, they will stamp you out. Welcome to reality. In the meanwhile I will do my best, like everyone else should, to be a 'good migrant', which usually means: learn the language, treat people with respect, don't commit crimes, do not not abuse the welfare system, learn the cultural norms, take part in cultural activities and list goes on.
From a logical standpoint there really is only one rational step you can take: you have to leave because you are a migrant.
And that's exactly where all of this thinking falls apart: in an equal, democratic society no group should be able to decide who's a good or a bad citizen. There's only the laws of the country that should count and everyone has to obey.
You should soften up your idea of "migration" because there is no inane biological quality in humans that make them good or bad.
99% of "immigration problems" are because of poverty and inequality (both too little or too much money can influence behaviour) and not because of some sort of gene that makes human behave badly.
> 99% of "immigration problems" are because of poverty and inequality
That's just made up claim there's no evidence to support this. Even if it were true it's not the taxpayers responsibility to import all the degenerate murderers and rapists from all over the world in the hopes of civilizing them.
Why should someone from a developed country agree to give up their safety and wealth to run this ridiculous and deadly experiment?
> Even if it were true it's not the taxpayers responsibility to import all the degenerate murderers and rapists from all over the world in the hopes of civilizing them.
That's just not how any of this works and I think you know it. You're just being obtuse, although I don't know why.
No. I have to leave when they decide I have to leave. Generally migrants are not a problem, unless they cause a lot of problems (UK), or there are way too many of them even if they were so called good migrants (again UK). Even some of the most anti-immigration political parties in my country (ethno-fascist actually, not my opinion, it is their policy) are not saying 100% no to migrants, but they have to check a LOT of marks to be here.
I have to say, that not every country is the same. United States from an outsider perspective seems like you could come from anywhere and look like anyone, as long as you pleadge your allegiance to the flag and become and 'American' you will be accepted. This is probably because US has a short history, and it wasnt too long ago when it was literally all migrants.
Start by kicking out criminals and people who entered illegally and 90% of the "anti immigration" people will be perfectly happy. We don't even apply the laws that already exist, it really is that simple
What constitutes a good migrant is up to the natives and the government of a country to decide. At the end of the day it doesnt matter what how good of a migrant I think I am. Any day the native population can turn very hostile and ram any migrant out of the country for any reason, be it crime record, ethnicity or something else.
There are so many other leavers to pull than this weird and random initiative: stop urban sprawl, extend public transport, curb automobile traffic, extend public spaces, reduce private property rights (Stichwort "Seeanschluss") to name some.
I'm still kind of hoping we're going this way instead of something like this initiative.
nuclear has its role currently but it's not the future.
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