Which society? There are many societies on the Earth today, and I predict that some of them will experience relative peace, security and prosperity, while others will experience conflict and instability.

Yeah, I mean, duh. Of course it’s too late to STOP climate change (barring some miraculous discovery). That’s been true for some time. The globe will continue to warm and the climate will continue to change, rapidly. However, it is not yet determined how much the globe will warm, how much the climate will change nor how rapidly.

According to Climate Action Center, the most likely future emissions scenarios will result in warming of between 1.9C and 2.7C by the end of the century. The climate models aren’t high enough resolution to project the next 75 years of every community on the planet, under each emissions scenario. We don’t know how warm it’s going to get or how much the climate will change, so we don’t know which societies will collapse or exactly how many people will die in any conflicts that might start as a result of climate migration or disputes over land and resources, etc. We just don’t know. We don’t know what’s over and what isn’t.

It’s looking like we’re going to land somewhere between generally pretty bad but manageable to the collapse of all civilization. No one knows. I have a feeling we won’t know for sure it’s over until after it’s well and truly over.

“Well in those days Mars was just a dreary, uninhabitable wasteland - much like Utah - but unlike Utah it was eventually made livable”

The national urban poverty rate plummeted from 52.9% to 38.1% in six months, while extreme poverty halved to 8.2%, marking the sharpest decline in decades.

President Javier Milei’s administration achieved this while slashing public spending by 5% of GDP and navigating a 1.7% economic contraction in 2024. Key drivers included targeted welfare programs and inflation control.

The government expanded the Universal Child Allowance (AUH) to cover teens up to age 17 and increased food card coverage, directly aiding vulnerable households.

So they cut spending overall, but expanded their Universal Child Allowance. I mean, that right there is probably what did most of the poverty reduction. The article doesn’t really say where the spending cuts came from. Could be they just cut a lot of waste, but it could be they’ve made cuts to important government services, and the effects haven’t necessarily been felt yet.

The IMF projects 5.5% GDP growth for 2025, fueled by rebounding consumption and investment. This turnaround challenges conventional wisdom that austerity inevitably harms vulnerable populations, showing market-oriented policies can coexist with poverty reduction when paired with precise safety nets.

Does it? Again, we don’t know what’s been cut and we don’t know what the long term effects of those cuts will be. All we know is that they made significant cuts overall, while also expanding two specific safety net programs. Admittedly, that has resulted in a significant reduction in the urban poverty and extreme poverty rates, for now, which is undoubtedly a good thing, but only time will tell if those will last.

This reads like neoliberal propaganda, but honestly Javier Milei is right of even most neoliberals. I seriously doubt the expansion of the Universal Child Allowance and the increased food card coverage will last. I’m certain Milei will want to cut those programs, at some point. He is anarchocapitalist adjacent, so I’m sure he wants to get as close as possible to no government spending at all, eventually.

No major kernel decisions were made,” jokes Russinovich in a post on LinkedIn.

Man, wouldn’t that be wild, though?

I stopped buying consoles and moved pretty much exclusively to Steam because it gives me many more options. Thankfully, I don’t think that’s changing anytime soon. Consoles are great for some people, but I need more flexibility. I sometimes wish I could (legally) play Nintendo first party games, but it’s really not that big of a deal.

Nintendo has spent decades building an extremely loyal, multigenerational consumer base. They also release very popular, high quality games. I have no interest in owning a Switch, but I get why so many people do.

No body wants that.

Somebody must want it, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. And that’s fine. People want what they want, I don’t think it’s mine, or anyone else’s place to tell someone what they can or cannot like or want. But, I hope you understand why it’s hard for some to find the motivation to fight for a society that they don’t particularly like.

Well, the quote I was responding to used the words “open borders” specifically. I may not understand the meaning of the term, as it is being used here, but hopefully you can understand my confusion. I didn’t realize that “open borders” meant “you can have and enforce borders.” I proceeded on the assumption that those two states exist in opposition to one another.

If they’ll accept Ukrainian law and, you know, not attempt to take over the country, yes why not?

And if the Russians don’t accept those terms? Or, say that they accept them to gain entry only to then carry out a campaign of slow annexation?

During Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, the pope asked that God ‘open borders, break down walls [and] dispel hatred’

Borders do serve a purpose, though. Should Ukraine open their borders to Russians? There are legitimate reasons for wanting to keep other people out.

I wasn’t trying to adhere to a strictly Marxist semantic structure. And the reason for that is: I’m not a Marxist. But you’ve made it quite clear that when words like “socialism” or “socialist,” or the term “socialist mode of production” are used incorrectly (according to Marxists), this can cause great consternation. Therefore, in the future I will use different words/terms, so that I might avoid offending the sensibilities of Marxists, such as yourself. Hopefully that will help me avoid interactions like this one, in the future.

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.

Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.

Source

Go back to my original comment where I described the socialist mode of production:

the socialist mode of production (when the means of production are owned by the government, or a group of workers, or a community)

No system is purely public or private

I know, that’s what I’ve been saying. That’s my whole point.

Socialism is a mode of production determined by public ownership

That’s what I’m talking about. Essentially every national economy on the planet includes at least some socialist production. I can’t think of a single national economy on the Earth where the production of all goods and services is carried out exclusively by privately owned, for-profit firms. Can you?

For some reason, people still act like capitalism and socialism (or communism) are mutually exclusive, that an economy must be one or the other. But if you look at essentially every national economy on the planet today, they are all some mix of the socialist mode of production (when the means of production are owned by the government, or a group of workers, or a community) and the capitalist mode of production (when the means of production are owned by a private individual or group of investors, operating for a profit). Almost no economy is exclusively one or the other.

It is true that in most countries with robust high speed rail, there is significant government involvement, like planning and building infrastructure, subsidies, or just providing rail travel as a public service. I definitely think that for a national rail service network to work, you need to do some planning. Here in the US, government and planning are bad words, but clearly they needn’t be.

What’s wild to me is that these games were all developed to run on Windows, not SteamOS or any other Linux distro. This is with the games requiring a compatibility layer to run. Imagine what they could do if the games were made to run on SteamOS.

The difference is that one costs a minimum of $30k, while the other can be had for less than $1k.

That’s true, yet I still think many people will opt to spend the additional money for a car. They’re covered and climate controlled, and they offer more passenger and cargo capacity. In the Netherlands, which you mentioned as an example of a country with high e-bike adoption, there are still millions of cars. I’m sure there are fewer cars than there otherwise would have been, but cars are still very much in the transportation mix. Not a bad thing, necessarily. I definitely think it has reduced car dependency - cars are no longer as much of a necessity - but cars are not eliminated.

I used to do something like what you’re describing. I would drive my car to a light rail station then take the train into the city to work. I suppose what you’re talking about is just replacing the car with an e-bike. That’s fine, but I don’t see a huge difference in this scenario between an e-bike and an electric car, especially since I wasn’t just driving to the light rail station, I was also driving to the grocery store and to restaurants and to the houses of friends and family, etc.

Now, if I had lived in the city nearer to my work, and to stores, and restaurants, and shops, etc, an e-bike would have made a lot more sense.

Many millions of Americans spend at least an hour commuting to and from work every day. I don’t think they’re going to want to do that on an e-bike.