avidamoeba

Japan doesn't recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. They have accepted the One-China policy. Given that and historical fact that Taiwan is a former colony of Japan, and given the tens of millions of Chinese the Japanese have killed in the not so distant past, what the new Japanese PM is doing is pretty dumbfounding. She literally created a diplomatic crisis. If the US decided to say that they'd defend Albertan separatists if Canada decided to take action to preserve Canadian territorial integrity, I'd expect no less of a response from the Canadian government, and Canadians at large. As for the current diplomatic spat, we shouldn't stand with either. Especially not running cover for the new Japanese PM's fuckup as that would make us looking just as stupid.

If Japan wants to change their stance on Taiwan, they should recognize them as a sovereign country and deal with the inevitable consequences without crying foul.

Please do. If there are any sort of legitimate elections, JD ain't winning them. His favourability is lower than Trump's and I doubt they can rescue that. He sounds much more toxic than trump and he reeks of unauthenticity.

Maybe less. But yeah.

Americans are unlikely to solve anything until their society goes through some dramatic changes.

WTF is this person doing?

Sir, we don't engage in (industrial) espionage. If we did, it wasn't us. If it was us, it wasn't a big deal. If it was a big deal, China engages in espionage. If China engaged in espionage so must we.

Joke aside, everyone can, should and does engage in espionage. It's the responsible thing to do.

I def used to fall for the algae campaign years ago.

If you feel that Wiki has savings and therefore doesn't need your money today, that's fine.

But other than that WTF is this nonsense? None of it follows. Says Wiki keeps increasing spending while not noting the obvious - that its savings are growing too. Worse, without noting that a big chunk of the expenses are going towards savings. From the report below, out of the 111M spent, 51M went to savings. His expenditure graph includes savings yet he thinks that's all spending. 😄

Anyone curious what Wiki spends on: https://wikimediafoundation.org/who-we-are/annualreport/2021-annual-report/financials/#section-2.

Haha, I see. You're right. I used to reason in accurate logical terms about this, and "won't" is the correct one from logical standpoint. Lately I don't do that anymore. Reason being that people who don't have this framework in their minds, about the system pressures and such, hear the "won't" and assign it a typical level of agency. In most situations when someone won't do something that they can do, there's a higher probability they can go from won't to would. So they feel like these actors in this system have a significantly higher propensity of doing the other thing than they actually do. If only Zuckerberg heard this or that argument, he'd see the light and stop being a piece of shit. If only he read that book, he'd stop fighting regulation. But that's not how it works and it's not about this or that individual. It's an aggregate action that makes most actors act to further interests opposed to ours. So these days I use "can't" to express how unlikely it is for the ruling class to do the other thing, even if it's not logically accurate. Cause a lot of people aren't looking at the system this way at all.

E: I think when working people grasp the near-impossibility of the ruling class going significantly against their own interest, they (working people) start seeing through the ruling class propaganda and begin reaching for the real solutions.

The ruling class fought hard to get the current administration elected so they can get the benefits it gave them so far and it's about to give them in the future. And the part of the class that didn't, later came onboard. The tax cuts and subsidies are massive. They're probably even gonna get bailed out of the AI crash.

The thing is, there's competition for growing profits. Not merely in one product market or another, because firms buy each other across markets. So if a firm doesn't profit maximize, it runs the risk of a profit-maximizer accumulating capital faster, eventually having enough to buy that firm. And so every firm that understands this risk engages in ever growing profits. And unfortunately growing profits means extracting more money from peoples incomes by increasing prices, reducing wages and reducing headcounts. These pressures push them to choose to do the thing that makes things worse for the employee class. They can make things better but practically competition makes them tend to choose worse. If a firm doesn't, "another one will." They only make things better when forced to by market pressures (e.g. labour shortage), collective action (unions, boycotts), or government action (regulation). They own the government (both parties), they've busted the unions, so they're left to act on market pressures. And there's plenty of workers looking for work.

This is also why I said that it'll take enough of us being fucked over to changes this. It's gonna take the form of us unionizing as well as organizing to take political power. E.g. grassroots campaigns to elect socialist candidates, as they're the only ones who'd represent our interests. Like Zohran's campaign.

This delay tactic again. They'll probably bring back algae biofuel next time around.

The current people of the ruling class can't do anything about it. Capitalism is going to proceed on its path, driving them to keep running over more and more people. It'll only stop when enough of us have been fucked over that we can take the power away from them.

If you feel this is abstract or theoretical, just look at the utter inability of the system to stop itself from inflating the obvious AI bubble. It's right in front of us. Everyone sees it. The ruling cass sees it. And they can't stop inflating it. This isn't random. Competition demands it. Imagine being the loser that decided to stop investing while your competitors actually get something out of it after the crash. That might turn you into a regular worker, making a living from a salary. A terrible thought.