the thing is that a lot of economics that you probably learned actually was true in the 20th century. just that the laws of physics - which we always thought were constant, unchanging, unyielding - are suddenly changing; and that’s hard to deal with.

it’s like, we always assumed that energy is always conserved. we can move it, burn it, consume it, but then it’s gone. it doesn’t come back. now we have renewable energy, and it’s breaking people’s brain. conservatives in the US still think that renewable energy cannot possibly work and must be a scam because energy is always conserved, it cannot be generated anew.

Maybe I got the neural implant already and the implant makes you forget you got the implant.

or, the far more likely option, life is just a dream and that’s why things appear when you think about them.

it’s worth noting that the usdollar is worth something because the military says it is. if you don’t pay your taxes in dollar, you go to prison where you get anally raped.

however, the military gets its strength through the legitimation by the people (democracy), so in the end, yes, the will of the people causes the political will, which causes military strength, which causes the value of the dollar. it’s a longer chain.

Every cost is labour cost in the end. It’s a bit off topic but was a interesting realisation for me. Every time you pay something you pay for another human’s labour in the end.

nope. you also pay for the right to extract materials out of the ground (mining rights). that is typically a tax, paid to the state or local community.

and then there’s company profits. where do these go?

It’s not that extreme, but even if we assume a 200 mph HSR train:

• It would still take 12 hours to drive the 2500 miles from Los Angeles (California) to Jacksonville (Florida)
• It would still take 6 hours to drive the 1200 miles from Jacksonville (Florida) to Boston (Massachusetts)

Admittedly, there’s a point to be made that hardly anyone would drive from Florida straight to Massachusetts or the other way around, but the distance is still impressive.

Airplanes who fly at 600 mph reduce that travel time to 1/3rd (excluding boarding, which can be time-consuming). I did not calculate how much a train ticket would cost, compared to a flight ticket.

Admittedly, i travel 400 miles by train in Europe all the time. (a couple times every year). It takes about 6 hours in total.

exactly. even under communism/socialism, a business must still operate at least somewhat meaningfully. it can’t just be “trains for the sake of trains”. there has to be a meaningful number of people served per km of rail. that’s why it makes sense near the coastlines.

also, short reminder that even if a rail goes at 200 mph, it would still take around 15 hours to travel the 3000 miles from east to west coast. almost nobody is willing to sit in a train for 15 hours straight. at that distance, most people prefer an airplane. it’s significantly faster.

i did some quick maths and calculated that at least in europe, for distances greater than ~800 km (~600 miles), an airplane is mostly faster than a train, at least in western europe.

I’m no expert on US geography, but isn’t it like really dumb to put 3 train lines through desert? (the red, yellow and grey lines).

i can understand the coastlines (east and west) and maybe one in the south (the yellow line). what i basically don’t get is the rest.

He was told he would serve 10 ½ years and avoid a possible death penalty, but it wasn’t until 2021 that a sympathetic judge finally released him. He was 73.

note: he was released because he wasn’t usable as a prison laborer anymore. he was released because the prison couldn’t make money off him anymore. he was released so he has to look for his own shelter.

please share it with anybody who could be interested in this! :D

please share! or i made this for nothing, which would make me sad :(

No this is patrick Lemmy.

Someone does still need to plant the food, harvest the food, pump the oil, cast the iron, smelt the aluminum, keep track of the shipping, etc.

and herein lies the paradoxy. how is that compatible with there being an unemployment crisis at the same time?

monkey’s paw:

you get paid for lunch break but in return, your hourly wage diminishes by 12%, sothat your total salary stays the same.

one state solution

Basically i’ve always had a personal hatred for single-family homes. I grew up in one, and i hated it. My parents moved into the middle of freaking nowhere when i was born, the neighborhood was dull, it was somewhere in the countryside, you couldn’t go anywhere without driving a car, my mother was always angry and tired and refused to drive me 90% of the time, and when she did drive me, annoyances always happened (like, i’d say to a friend i’d meet them at 3pm, and it’s a 10 minute drive, and we start driving at 2:40pm, and then my mother remembers she has to go grocery shopping first, which takes 45 minutes, and she does that before dropping me off at my friend’s place, stuff like that). It was frustrating.

In the countryside, you’re dependent on fossil fuels. You’re dependent on putting that transparent fluid in your car’s tank day-after-day, which i suspect is a method of mind-controlling the people, because it makes the people feel dependent on some kind of infrastructure (gas station) that they don’t understand. I mean, where does petroleum come from? have you ever seen it produced? the people can’t produce it locally, so they’re dependent on the government’s goodwill that it continues to be provided to them.

if the people had solar panels, a whole lot of things would be less shit. people would feel somewhat more self-reliant, being able to produce their own energy and all, and i guess that would improve people’s self-esteem a lot.

anyways, i’ve always had a very hatred of the single-family home. it has 1000 m³, of which you realistically need about 300 for 4 people, for a kitchen, a toilet, a shower, and beds. the extra room is to brag to your neighbors (“what would the neighbors think if we were poor!”) and mostly to cause yourself a lot of stress while you’re trying to clean that whole space, while you could instead just chill and relax. but i guess relaxing means that you have to face your inner emotions, and we can’t have that! (according to the people i’ve met)

Money, no matter how much of it you have or believe you have is only as valuable as everyone believes it to be.

It’s a modern day religion.

the thing that causes the dollar to have value is the fact that the US government demands that the people pay a certain amount of taxes in USdollars. if you can’t pay that, you go to jail.

so, the dollar is an extension of military power. they’re forcing you to do something, but instead of sending the military to your door directly and abducting you, they instead require that you either have a certain amount of dollars or they will send the military/police to your door. it’s a placeholder for military power.

he’ll be thrilled to roll out Trumpcoin as the alternative and then rugpull the world a second time.

for a currency to have actual value, some government with real (military) power must demand that currency via taxation. otherwise, at least theoretically, the paper currency has no actual value.

We’re witnessing the reemergence of a multi-polar world. The dollar will take a hit. It’s not the end of dollarization.

the thing is that if the US really goes through balkanization, that puts an absolute end to the US dollar.