If a lot of money is involved, it's only a matter of time before all oversight is corrupt. Similarly, you can safely assume all data that is on an important (big money) topic is fake.
A website was taken down. This might technically violate some paperwork law, but the real problem is we don't actually prosecute war crimes/human rights violations. So what difference does it make if some website went down?
I don't see how anything has changed in a meaningful way. George Bush "tortured some folks" and Obama assassinated US citizens abroad. The status quo is literal evil and Trump is behaving in accordance with the status quo.
I recently bought a fancy muscle car with all that crap integrated into the infotainment system. I explained to the sales guy that I WANTED to keep this car for the rest of my life but was concerned that wouldn't be possible. In 10 years it may literally be impossible to find a phone that will connect via the USB/bluetooth to the infotainment system. We may all be using something completely different. Not to mention, no one will be manufacturing replacements for that infotainment system if it ever craps out.
You can go buy a 50 year old muscle car and upgrade the radio to something kind of modern. But that won't be possible with my car 50 years from now. It's too integrated.
The sales guy had clearly never considered this issue before.
Cash for clunkers destroyed mountains of cars which increased pollution and forced a bunch of people up the food chain with regard to competition for used cars.
The infotainment system on my car can make changes to the suspension. Can change from street to track mode and even has a launch mode I can initiate for starting a timed 0-60, etc.
I can also put the car into valet mode so it won’t go fast. If I forget the valet mode password I am told I have to buy a very expensive replacement because it can’t be unlocked by a dealer.
The rule of thumb is if something has a cost and persists over time it must have some benefit even if we don’t understand what that is. Otherwise, creatures not paying the cost will outcompete over time.
Executives have done all manner of things which reduced productivity. Hoteling alone must have cost billions in lost focus.
They’re suspicious of work from home because employees like it. If they were concerned about productivity they’d make deals where you can work from home but have to work 10% more hours or something to make up for whatever imagined productivity was lost.
The elites have put themselves in a position where the two main options are the sentiment above or Luigi Mangione. It honestly scares me a bit what's coming.
I agree the empire is in a very dangerous place because it has expanded the labor force more rapidly than it has expanded supply of jobs. This is an existential risk to the empire.
We have flooded the STEM market with foreign workers. Sometimes we don't even give the foreign workers real jobs, we pretend they are "grad students" and pay them a pittance doing high level science at the universities. I generally like all the foreign folks I've worked with, but they are definitely suppressing the wages of natives to an insane degree.
I would argue the purpose of public education is directionally to attempt to level the playing field between people who start with a lot and people who start with a little. And in this regard, it is an absolute failure. People sometimes attribute public schooling to helping someone "escape poverty" or whatever, but I think it's mostly IQ and big 5 personality traits. And it's extremely unfortunate that both of those appear to be largely genetic.
Here's a real brain bender. Let's assume it takes approximately average IQ to understand basic algebra, so approximately 100 IQ. Half of the population has less than that IQ. Squinting really hard and making things up, something like 40% of the population is intellectually incapable of understanding exponential growth and decay. So how can it be legal/ethical for them to sign a contract to get a credit card or a mortgage if they literally cannot understand it? That's just one example. Once you crack this egg open, it breaks a lot of things required for modern society to function.
At one company I worked at someone had been fired for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company didn't even press charges. I guess the PR issue wasn't worth it. Wild.
We are not allies. We do not share a common culture or morality. Your arguments are irrelevant. The schools are being destroyed right before your eyes and you are powerless to stop it.