Before LCDs won the race to price affordability, there were many competing novel approaches to display technology. Many engineering teams were based in the south bay but they all lost out to LCDs which won out by being good enough at the time at a price people could afford. Lots were vying for government contracts (this was a time when Japan "owned" compact display technologies.) Obviously they all lost out to LCDs and derivatives.
The issue I’ve seen with these lowest levels of governance is pettiness. Why did so and so get a break and not me five years ago? I don’t like plants why do we need a watering system? I’m allergic to mosquito foggers, can people just stay in at night, etc., etc.
"Even if the droughts had not been evenly distributed across Mesoamerica, the spared pockets would still have been vulnerable to their second-order effects — political instability, warfare, mass migration."
Those stressors could have pushed even rainy cities past what the local societies could tolerate, as mutually reinforcing crises rippled into each other.
That seems to be the part you're not quoting (sentence right after what you quoted) that rings true to that and I do think should be called out to "make your point".
Like, think back to the "Arab spring" when mass migration attempts were made towards Western Europe (some of it continuing today). In geological history context, a thousand years from now, that's within the timeframe examined in the article for the past, given Europe is now experiencing more drought-like conditions itself as well.
Or think of South American mass-migration attempts from a few years ago, that went all the way up to Canada. Never mind the grab for Ukraine's most prolific wheat production areas (I'll leave it up to the reader to search up maps for this - they do differ by years for example but we can see a general tendency towards anything east of the Dnipro river being a really good area to have under your control in the future.
- Private insurance is always up to one's own, very few employers provide this.
- If young, your parents or yourself have to pay for coverage until you graduate, otherwise no coverage.
- If elderly, depends on your employment history. To qualify, your employers have to contribute continuously for decades and it's tied with social security. Otherwise you are on your own.
- If working age but no job, similar to being young you have to pay.
Me buying food from restaurant would make the owner richer, but would also employ more people at the restaurant.
The scarcity issue is valid when the resource is limited. In case of US, I was not aware of food scarcity. Even housing is more due to policies than actual land scarcity.
Economic activity does have positive feeback. Yes, some people get unfairly rich - but the solution is not to stop the activity, instead try to get the rich pay their fair share of contribution to the country.
Why are we relegating locals to menial restaurant jobs? Why not have programs to get them trained and into higher earning jobs?
A local working a restaurant will often need to take advantage of welfare. If instead we funneled the locals to higher paying jobs, we would be better off. We're supposed to look after our own citizens, afterall --that's the whole point of electing a government.
What’s the proportion of local crime syndicates having local roots vs Eastern European roots? Is it even or is it lopsided? I really don’t know but have them impression it’s anglos but also lots from other parts of Europe.
But also maybe they got there by paying and lobbying previous admins to the detriment of the local workforce (though likely good fiscally for the orgs taking advantage of the program).
It is completely possible this is a legitimate issue, but the current administration has been so corrupt about everything else it is impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Even if the claim is valid I’m sure the enforcement is targeted.
You think they’d go after palintir or spacex for the same issues?
There is a likelihood of some targeting though this isn’t the only admin to do that. Remember when the IRS was directed to audit conservative organizations (you know maybe they had a higher likely hood of fraud, maybe, but that was not proven)
That said, it seems this is targeting body farms. Firms that specialize in corrupting the process. Yes some people they bring over have unique talents, but a lot of them are run of the mill folks looking to become “manager” so they can attract a mate back home.
> Remember when the IRS was directed to audit conservative organizations
It was directed to audit them less, because they were complaining about being audited as much as other organizations. Yet another case where conservatives make themselves victims out of nowhere, to get preferential treatment and then continue pretend they were victims after proven wrong.
He admitted that the majority of the targeted auditing was against conservative orgs while also targeting a minority of liberal orgs. He admitted to the targeting and also that it greatly focused on conservative orgs.
I'm not against going after fraud, but you have to be even handed about it.
You can read NPR's take. They admit they targeted conservative groups but also had progressive bycatch.
I can't see any quotes there except claims of keyword searches. I haven't yet read the pdf.
If its true that it was based on keyword searches, then I would hope a future government gets the balls to do the same for the current Trump admin's keyword based banning/removal shenanigans.
Piracy is more “I don’t like the terms you’ve set.” Some terms are overbearing. Some are more reasonable. Both get pirated but at different rates. Some people just don’t like the idea of paying at all. Some people will pay onerous terms.
Gabes point is thay the balance of the two is overwhelmingly; yes some pirates will always pirate. Most win prefer to buy the game if the terms are reasonable. Being smart enough to undetstand this and run his business accordingly is why Gabe owns yachts.
That's kind of like saying places that suffer from dine-and-dashers suffer from a service problem. I disagree.
Some services can sustain subsidization. Google can "give out" GMail, people will be happy to have the service for "free". Smaller players who can't subsidize their service(s) with ad platforms may have to either charge money or offer fewer features and recoup revenue via features.
Gabe has the breadth and resources to practice his economics -many others do too; however, many smaller or more focused players don't have that liberty. Obviously we have companies who go to extremes to ruthlessly extract as much as they can from their customers. They are obviously deserving of criticism --but not everyone who wants can play by Gabe's philosophy.
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