avidamoeba

joined 2 years ago
[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The Hunger Games.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Remember #DeadRaccoonTO

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I bet the CCP is going to make the homeowners whole at a minimum to avoid the risk of social instability.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If you stop thinking about the metadata (the financial part) of the system and instead you look at the real system in terms of resources available for ensuring a decent standard of living, you might possibly find that the working population can farm, manufacture and service its own and it's retired population's needs. China could make the reforms needed to adjust the meta to fit the real system that supports this standard of living. It might for example remove failed markets from parts of the economy such as retirement savings, replacing them with universal pensions. Of course this isn't unique to China, but such reforms depend on how firmly a nation has bought into the neoliberal ideology. My point is that in general, the financial part of the system never matches the real. There's always discrepancies (e.g. positive and negative externalities to name some) large or small. It's a model. It seems to me that we often make the mistake to consider just the model and drive real decisions and predictions based on it even when it drastically diverges from reality, sometimes with horrific consequences. E.g. the model says increasing extraction of fossil fuels is fine when we have scientific proof it isn't.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago

And with what weapons?

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For one, on its abysmal failure that allowed Oct 7 to occur.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

And generally you have to come up with the money to build it yourself or from the private sector, for a venture that won't be making much money itself. And then say you somehow manage to build the vertical, in our loosely regulated free market economy, this vertical is likely to have monopolistic power over the market, which is bad for people in the system, apart from the ones participating in the vertical.

I'm not advocating that our loosely regulated free market economy is good BTW. I'm simply trying to state its implications on vertical integration and vice versa. Vertical integration is clearly more efficient than the alternative, but free market economies allow it to create harmful effects.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

For the sake of argument, picture BYD getting much larger subsidies that allows it to sell EVs for half the price of anything European autos can sustainably produce. As a result Europeans overwhelmingly buy BYD over European EVs. Given that EVs are mandated to be the vast majority of cars sold in the near future, that's Europeans buying very few European cars. Picture this persisting over long enough period to exhaust any savings European autos have. Such an event would result in a significant devaluation of European autos as well as outright bankruptcies. Followed by many thousands of Europeans losing well paying union jobs. Followed by BYD scooping up European autos brands and assets. If you see the downsides for Europe in this picture, perhaps you'd see why you or the EC might care differently about European autos subsidies versus Chinese ones. Perhaps this makes it make sense.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 35 points 2 years ago

This all sounds like lower profits. Can't have that.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think he's referring to the Tories' ability to make money disappear into private pockets. In this case removing it from Brits pockets and not making it to the oppressed and needy either. Rather than helping the needy and oppressed is bad for Brits.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

Is he stepping down or something?

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is so fucking annoying... and so irresponsible given how many people's futures are at stake, let alone the rest of the world that is affected by it in a number of ways.

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