701–710 of 728 posts
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Are you struck at the possibility of a inner-city family on welfare, or poor rural areas thinking that the US should be spending fungible dollars on them and not someone half way across the world?
The people who oppose foreign aid oppose aiding Americans also.
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The US cannot possibly ever win the hearts and minds of the entire population. It is a classic example of "damned if you do and damned if you don't"
The desired outcome isn't capturing hearts and minds, it's preventing easily preventable diseases and deaths for what amount to pennies in the federal budget.
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Where congress just follows the party line. Or does back room deals I think the larger problem with democracy in general is that constituencies are no longer geographic. A software engineer in Austin and one in San Jose have far more in common than a software engineer in Austin and a Tractor dealer in Austin. The representative for Austin has to represent the conflicting views of both the Tractor dealer and the softw…
Back room deals aren't necessary a negative. That how the sausage is made. I rather have backroom deals when people can make rational compromise, rather then having media spectral where congress sessions are reality TV. Mostly used to get clips that can then be used in adds. > I think the larger problem with democracy in general is that constituencies are no longer geographic. I think that is a good point. Specifical…
Farming, Tech, Fossil Fuels, Civil Rights, etc. Maybe as many as 50.
Each one puts up candidates, perhaps on a list basis,
You give everyone 10 votes to distribute to those candidates. If you're really into supporting Farming, you might put 10 votes to Farmers and screw the rest. If you are more widely concerned you might put a couple in tech, a couple in civil rights, one in space, etc.
Those votes are then distributed and the number of representatives are chosen in proportion. If Farming gets twice the votes as Tech, they have twice the congressmen, and Farming gets twice the representation at a national level.
If you don't have this, you end up with widely supported low level things (say a 15% support evenly across the country - truckers for example) with no representation, but areas where there are high levels of concentrated support (Tech for example) with a lot of representation.
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The US cannot possibly ever win the hearts and minds of the entire population. It is a classic example of "damned if you do and damned if you don't"
The US was easily winning the hearts of minds of most people before Trump randomly decided to shoot America in the foot.
From my prospective everyone hates America, but weirdly wants to migrate here at he same time. (Except for the online minority who threaten to leave but never do)
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And the evidence that SpaceX is in the interest of American citizens is...? Neuralink existed for years before Musk. If it weren't him, the researchers would have continued with other investors or govt grants (Trump gutting the NIH recently notwithstanding). Compare this paltry evidence of benefit with the massive damage being done by the Musk-directed DOGE group, and it's clear billionaires being able to use their m…
> And the evidence that SpaceX is in the interest of American citizens is...? Starlink. The one that connected the N Carolina hurricane victims when FEMA failed, and then again in Los Angeles. NASA can now launch missions at 10% of the cost, due to SpaceX. > Neuralink existed for years before Musk. According to Google: "Neuralink, an invasive BCI company with a short-term goal of treating various neurological disorde…
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> It's never too late to fix. The problem is the time frame. We're never out of time but the problem is time? There is absolutely a point of no return.
Sorry, I should have said: The problem is the time frame of the fix If the US ends up a smoking ruin it can still be fixed, it'll just take longer.
The problem with the US is though, that they have the most powerful military on the planet, and the US ending up in smoking ruins probably means lots of other places going down with it, when the US looks outside for reasons of its failure. It is quite dangerous.
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The two women arguing before Solomon over which was the true mother of the baby each claimed the other was lying. One of them was actually the mother. That both sides believe the other lies does not mean that both sides lie.
I don't believe that you believe that, in the circumstance we're discussing. I obviously could list basically endless lies of any contemporary political administration. Before the country became so polarized there were common 'jokes' that weren't really jokes like, 'How do you know a politician is lying?' 'Because his lips are moving.'
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I think there was a lot of pressure on Tesla/Elon to donate and participate more, and higher ups turned pretty hard on him when he didn't. They were pulling the tax credit from Tesla while holding EV summits with everyone but him. I don't think he was being reactionary, I think his hand was forced. Further he really isn't a conservative. He's still running around on X talking about how we need to double the number of…
He's incredibly conservative. He very much likes the idea of Neo-feudalism. You have a class that owns everything (of which he's the prime example right now) and then you have a class that labors to rent things from people like him. Those who don't - or can't - play that game are simply not fit to survive. It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots…
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> Also forget that not a single deal was made Whoa, whoa, whoa, good sir, Trump has personally made 200 deals [0] that are totally real, they just go another school. [0] https://time.com/7280114/donald-trump-2025-interview-transcr...
Hey now, I'll have you know that Trump just signed a deal to steal Ukraine's resources at gunpoint lest he let them be devoured by Russia. Art of the Deal!
Essentially the deal splits covered natural resource profits between the US and Ukraine, and says that Ukraine will have to pay for future military "aid" out of their share of the proceeds.
Of course Ukraine can renege on the deal in the future if they feel they no longer need the US support that it brings them.
What Ukraine gains here is:
- Continued military support from the US that they are now paying for
- The US having skin in the game
- Language in the agreement that labels Russia as the aggressor (well, duh, but it'll piss off Putin)
What the US really gains is:
- Ability of Trump to say he made a deal, even if it appears to be one that may prolong the war rather than end it (he's hoping MAGA voters will forget he promised to end it)
- Some ongoing repayment for past and future military aid, which is entirely reasonable
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Every voice on that (except the last one as it is too vague) is popular with the relevant electorate. I dislike how a bunch of random unrelated shit is stuffed together into a single bill but that is because the US is a vetocracy.
Isn't manufacturing more cars in the US also popular with the electorate?
2) whether anything that happened in the last month is going to promote more domestic manifacturing is quite dubious at best.
As a quick excercise:
- for almost every industry new factories would be needed to significantly increase domestic production
- you are disencintivized to mix foreign and domestic materials if you plan to export (as you are going to pay potentially double tariffs)
- most things (especially cars) have long supply chains
- building a factory takes both non-trivial investment and at least a few months
And you get that for many products it would take sorta
lenght_of_supply_chain * (few_months + gathering_fund_permits_time)