I'd buy the argument made in the article more if they could explain what harm the scammers are avoiding by weeding those of us who can spot a misspelling as early as possible. Do they immediately start investing a great deal of time in a possible "mark" right after one reply from them?
Most people are terrible at pricing an item over its full lifetime. A smaller cash outlay almost always attracts a sale, even if the item has a much shorter expected lifespan than a more expensive alternative, or will require constant repairs, etc. Seeing a low base price on a car, fridge, etc will sway people to buy an item even if there's now a larger operational expense. You're not just powering a device you own anymore but also "unlocking" the Ice Maker Feature(tm) for $5/month.
This feels like businesses are trying to force everyone in the debt trap that keeps the poor where they are. Having to pay a monthly subscription for basic functionality isn't _that_ different from being in debt. But instead of floating consumers a loan, these companies are selling an item that selectively breaks if they miss a payment.
> The only difference here is that there’s now the option to change the program over the air.
The mutability is the part that bothers me. Remotely disabling features and the option to hike prices for monthly subscriptions to have functionality in the car serve to erode the concept of ownership. I'm not a Tesla owner but I believe they also allow paid upgrades that neither stick with the owner nor with the car during a sale. How is that not exploitative?
It's obviously possible to buy gold in non-USD currencies. So I think the gist of your comment applies to the dominance the US has over oil markets. So while the "petrodollar" era is still ongoing but its day seem numbered, e.g. by pushing Russia to seek other export markets besides the West, by the increasingly cool perception of the US by OPEC nations [1], etc.
I agree with the general premise of your comment, that this is a small sign of the deglobalization which is _already_ under way.
But, what are the UUUGE tailwinds benefiting India? India, even more so than China, seems likely to "get old before it gets rich." Its TFR is already below replacement and falling rapidly.
I've never heard anyone from the US or Europe claim that plastic will degrade back into the ground. Somehow they changed their "entire culture" to put trash in cans.
>Ideas, especially those that stoke resentments, are like viruses.
The problem is that people make statements like this but apply them selectively. E.g., platforms like major news networks are happy to give airtime to the claim that people alive today, who never owned slaves and are very likely not descended from anyone who did, must pay reparations to others alive today who were never enslaved and may well not be descended from slaves. These same platforms also give airtime to those claiming all societal ills stem from one ethnic group or another (as long as it's the "right" ethnic group being blamed).
This incredibly skewed double standard isn't fooling anyone.
The Puritans were especially strident in imposing their beliefs though. Their concept of collective salvation meant they'd brook no dissent at all. And so _anyone_ not toeing the line was treated as a mortal threat and could be subject to immense cruelty.
Interestingly, many descendants of these Puritans are still just as willing to impose their own religious beliefs on the rest of humanity. Although some details of the religion are vastly different, its rough shape is still the same (humanity can be remade and perfected, everyone must join in this endeavor or we're all lost, rejection of hierarchy, etc.) I'd wager this is even the source of many of the moral conceipts we see in America's foreign policy. Every farflung tribe on Earth must organize a government the way we organize ours. Every society must tolerate the same beliefs that we do, and also not tolerate the same things that we do not.
That sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox, and in fact the article has this snippet: "The expansion of slavery in the United States following the invention of the cotton gin has also been cited as an example of the effect.[12]"
In fact, there were even claims during the 2020 riots that "White silence is violence." See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSVUrvnJFXs. That's right, even _not_ saying anything at all (including not parroting the expected slogans) is a direct act of violence.
Nazism can't be forklifted into 2020s USA, _even if_ someone texts his mom Hitler pics. That guy is LARPing, like many do, and killed and injured people in the process. It's awful that this happened but it's still not proof that Nazism is not he cusp of emerging in the US. There are others who are convinced the US is on the brink of a Leninist coup. They are also wrong, since that too can't just be forklifted to another place and era.
It's a strange thing about today: many people want it to be some other time and place and try hard to pretend that it is. It's kind of understandable that much of this centers on WW2, given that a lot of the patriotic mythos in the US comes from that time. Maybe because it's the last time the USA won a major war and got to feel heroic, write history, etc.
This is typical of Americans' understanding of the events leading up to the Second World War. It seems that a lot of the wartime propaganda still holds sway, reducing many to view this part of history as having an almost cartoon-like simplicity.
For example, what Zunger labels point 05.17 "[When the Nazis came to power in Germany], They held angry public rallies which often included violence." This is true. But there's a lie of omission here. These sorts of intense street demonstrations were incredibly common in Weimar Germany (and before that, even), with a lot of street clashing between left-wind and right-wing groups, including paramilitaries. These didn't begin when the Nazis came to power and are not indicative of Nazism per se. Filtering one's view of history through that bias misses many important points that one could apply to the world today.
Nazism was an ideology tied to its particular time and place in history. Redefining it to mean "socialism for members of the nation. And they decide who's in and who's out." is wrongheaded. This definition would seem to apply to any modern nation with social welfare programs and citizenship requirements tied to nationality like Israel or the PRC. Are these countries practicing Nazism or is this definition wrong?
There are some important lessons to learn from that period though. For example: power vacuums get filled quickly. Governments that are derelict in their duty to keep order get challenged by upstart "governments." It's right to ask if one's government is turning a blind eye to "angry public rallies which often included violence" and get worried if that's happening. Sadly I think this has been happening in the USA.