fair enough, makes sense, I was trying to think outside the box of “storing” the power as pumped hydro or batteries…but I guess where they exist, these industries still welcome the negative prices when they happen :)

There is never surplus power with a network of a few “turn it on as needed” intensive industrial uses like haber-bosch reactors for ammonia, dessalination plants and electrolysis for aluminium or other metals…right?

At this point what they learn in business schools is the full bestiary of legal and illegal tricks and scams you can use to extract money from us cattle and contribute as little as possible to the upkeep :(

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Maybe it will get worse in the future, but what resources do immigrants require? They don’t need nannies or childcare or schooling…they just work, consume and pay taxes like everyone else. Has this ever been a problem for the US? Up to the 1930s, the US had an immigration of over 11% of population, the same as it’s been since the 2000s. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time

I won’t even mention the EU, we’re in demographic suicide here because raising kids people until they have a job and a house and stability is fucking expensive xP

Ok, fine, I hadn’t considered that and it’s a factor. None of the demographically declining countries like Italy, Japan, Portugal is doing great in terms of growth…but they don’t have deflation either. You also have the productivity growth factor into account with automation (meaning each citizen produces more but also uses more resources)

Sure, any economy can experience deflation if you have more goods chasing the same amount of currency, but the point is that most economies usually print money, that causes inflation (moderately that mimics around 2% (approx. linear resource growth) and 4% (rent extraction). Interest rates influence market behaviour that causes inflation but do not determine inflation.

It’s ok, but it’s possible some people will walk out thinking “the people are too stupid for democracy” like Mussolini, “we need to wipe out these fuckwit degenerates” like Old Testament God. But I guess it’s good for venting and ranting with friends.

Probably a typo, but currency is *inflationary, cryptocurrency is *deflationary, that’s why it’s not for spending “now” (e.g. hodlbros)

Why are you replying here? I’m talking to you upstairs. Chill out.

Sometimes it is, but even when it isn’t, “taste” by itself is not by itself what is making people stopping themselves from an adequate vehicle.

This is what I was originally replying to and I think it’s nonsense (regardless of how “refined” your taste is):

Well if Mercedes and BMW could stop making electric cars as ugly as humanly possible we would quickly see them take that market back.

Yes, I’m one of those people who wouldn’t mind living in Zion, eating nutritious slop and wearing unremarkable homemade textiles ;)

PS: but I understand many people need to brag to their friends or impress their clients or make themselves feel better by displaying their status in some material way.

I just don’t see any huge aesthetic differences between any of the cars for sale that would singlehandedly stop e.g. German electric cars from being sold: they all look like sleek solutions to a conditioned aerodynamics problem :D

Haha, yea, the only heresy greater than owning an ugly efficient car these days is riding a bus 😧, it seems.

Ugly? Why do people fetishize their cars? I want it to work efficiently, be safe and cheap to maintain…if it looks like a gherkin, so be it 😄 The problem with German electric cars is not that, it’s that atm they can’t compete with China in price and they have no tech edge in supply chains anymore. Also, newer generations in Europe aren’t as obsessed with owning a car anymore (I think).

No more cheap russian gas and oil, internal combustion engine expertise and all the associated pieces and submarkets being phased out in favour of simpler electric cars…it’s going to be a few hard years until they find a new export industry to perfect. I’d expect hydrogen-based aviation or pharma, maybe even semiconductors, they’ll figure it out.

Yaaaay, new comic :3

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The term tankie has been vulgarized, but it has a specific meaning. A tankie is an orthodox communist who puts the “dictatorship of proletariat” above any morality or any other interest, foreign or domestic. That’s how a tankie brushes away any genocide, any crime, because no value or entity is too important to stand in the way of their communist utopia, even human rights. In this sense, this group is very close in practice to nazis, you just have to replace “proletariat” with “nation” and for that abstraction anything is allowed: internal repression, invading your neighbours and allies.

But not all “communists”/socialists are like that and many mean well (e.g. Gorbachev, some anarchists like Chomsky or “democratic-communist” Lula, etc), but a good few follow tankies unquestioningly without realising the underlying inhumanity dressed as theory.

Eh, but you have examples of long-term problems created by each president: you had Clinton’s half-baked Eastern European legacy, Bush II’s middle east legacy that lasted a while, Trump’s completely polarised political landscape. I’m not sure what Obama’s main fuckup was, but there were many small neglects (maybe the main one was how he handled the 2008 crisis that Bush II left him)…the more influence you have as a country and as a person, the more shit falls on your plate to deal with :/

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