Anyone celebrating this, you HAVE to understand that the US and Israel did NOT do this because it was what the Iranian people wanted, they did it because it was what THEY want. Whether this will actually be good or bad for the Iranian people makes absolutely no difference to the US and Israel. They don’t care about the Iranian people, they don’t respect the Iranian people. This was a selfish act on the part of the US and Israel, not a selfless one.
So will the US and Israel wait and see what ends up filling the power vacuum they just created or will they just go right to installing a new, pro US/Israel regime themselves?
It’s really, really important for people to understand that Iranians wanting Khamenei gone is NOT the same thing as Iranians wanting the US and Israel to bomb their country.
Everyone in here saying, “why don’t you stand up to him, Dems?”
Guys, the Democrats don’t do that. I don’t think they even know how to do that. The whole concept is so alien to them you might as well be asking them to surf the rings of Saturn. No, no, the Democrats don’t stand up to rich and powerful people, they gargle their balls. They can get those things so deep in their donor holes that they can tickle the scrot with their uvulas.
If you’re looking for the Dems to stand up to Trump, you’re barking up the wrong tree, friends.
More dense urban areas certainly should be more affordable than suburban or rural areas, but they’re often not. Or at least not as much as they could be.
One reason is I think many suburban and rural areas are being subsidized by urban areas, by using urban tax revenue to pay for suburban infrastructure.
But I think the biggest reason is that urban areas are often in much higher demand, because that’s where most of the jobs and housing are located, but the supply of housing is simply insufficient to meet the demand, thus driving up housing prices. And other prices, too. There’s a supply demand imbalance for a lot of things in many higher density urban areas. And part of that is by design. The “suppliers” of homes, that is landlords, don’t want to oversupply the market with housing, relative to demand, because that will push down rents, and they want rents to be as high as possible, because rents are their source of revenue.
Until urban areas find ways to significantly increase the supply of housing relative to the demand, housing prices in those urban areas will remain higher than they could, or should be. Non-car transportation infrastructure also needs to be significantly improved in many urban areas, but that takes money. Money that many urban residents either don’t want to pay, or can’t pay because so much of their income is going to housing, and other costs of living. Edit: Plus, these infrastructure projects are often poorly managed by politicians, causing cost over runs and long delays.
Finally, there’s a social/cultural element to this that almost no one talks about because it’s seen as problematic or taboo. People don’t necessarily want to be surrounded on all sides by people they don’t consider to be a part of their cultural or ethnic group. I’m sorry, I know, reading that makes a lot of people’s butt holes clinch, but it’s true. I think people would be much more willing to live in more densely populated urban areas if the people in these areas were more like them (culturally, ethnically). You can choose not to believe that because it makes you uncomfortable, but, uncomfortable though it may be, I think it is nonetheless true.
Edit: I want to add that I think there is also a class element to this, in addition to the cultural/ethnic element. Many people move out to the suburbs because they don’t want to be around people they see as being of a “lower class” than them. Edit, again: also, where there are higher rates of poverty in urban areas, there are often higher crime rates. Many urban areas are often very unequal, with wealthier areas that are better maintained with better schools, very near much poorer areas that are more poorly maintained with worse schools.
Final edit: so, for better urban areas we need: to stop using urban tax revenue to subsidize suburban infrastructure. We need to significantly increase the supply of housing relative to demand, even perhaps oversupplying housing to drive housing costs down as much as possible. We need better non-car infrastructure and better leadership to better manage the building and maintenance of that infrastructure. We need to reduce poverty and inequality in urban areas as much as possible. If we do those things across all urban areas, I think the ethnic and cultural issues will work themselves out.
Historic economic crises tend to do that.
Neoliberalism collapsed with the financial crisis. It was fully exposed as a failed ideology. But, nearly two decades later, there still isn’t a consensus on what should replace it. There are plenty of ideas, but no consensus. The division will continue until a consensus emerges.
Billionaires become billionaires because they want all of the power and privileges that come along with it. If having the total freedom and liberty to do whatever you want is your goal, there doesn’t seem to be any better way to accomplish that than to become obscenely rich. And I think that’s why so many people tolerate this cultural, social arrangement: because their goals are aligned with the super wealthy. The difference between the rich and the poor isn’t their values, it’s their net worth. That’s why everyone is hustling so hard every day to try and get as rich as possible, so that one day, maybe, they might be the one laying out on the deck of a yacht, drinking expensive champagne, snorting coke and getting a hand job from a beautiful, young girl.
The plug they came up with, that eventually became the NAC standard. Technology Connections did a video about it, and he is no Tesla fan, I assure you of that.
This is why Tesla has been a mixed bag. They have made some smart choices and they have made some not so smart choices. Unfortunately, because they essentially are the EV market in America, all other companies looking to bring EVs to the market have copied Tesla in many ways, both the good and the bad. I think that’s at least part of the reason why the EV market is suffering right now.
It’s almost like capitalism is failing.
Yeah, and it’s taking forever. It’s like watching an ultra show motion train wreck. It’s maddening.
Then if the US is serious about preventing the supposedly “artificially cheap” Chinese imports from coming in they need to crack down on those importers circumventing the tariffs. If we can’t or won’t, I don’t see another option other than to just accept cheap Chinese imports. And that goes for any economy angry about China’s supposed unwillingness to “play fair.”
I assume that what articles like these are advocating for is that importing countries come together and somehow bully China into raising their prices. But whether it’s that or tariffs with better enforcement, the result is the same: no more cheap Chinese goods, meaning higher prices for customers who have gotten used to the lower priced imports from China.
Ok, well, if tariffs on Chinese imports won’t work because China will just find ways to circumvent them, then you just have to accept “artificially” cheap Chinese goods being imported into your country, unless you can convince consumers to stop buying them. That likely won’t work either, but I don’t see any other option. You can ask China to raise their prices but I imagine that’s already been tried and likely also failed.
China’s overbearing exports are changing minds about the benefits of open trade well beyond the United States.
If China is so “overbearing,” don’t trade with them. Don’t buy their products. Follow the US’s lead and tariff the hell out of Chinese imports. You don’t have to import Chinese products. You can choose to not buy Chinese stuff. No one is forcing you to buy Chinese products.
“American exceptionalism” has always been a euphemistic propaganda term that really meant American supremacism. It has been the justification, used by both of the two major parties in the US, for continued US global hegemony.
Supremacism of any kind is a flawed and dangerous concept. The fact is, we are neither exceptional nor superior.
Being hyper independent is lonely, but it’s better than any of the alternatives I know of.
I’m thinking it’s more about how much of the abuse you can tolerate. It’s not like the US has been all that hesitant to abuse our allies in the past. It’s more like our allies have previously been able to convince themselves that the benefits outweighed the costs.
I think you’re right. The world has accepted, or at least tolerated US hegemonic dominance because it worked well enough, but that doesn’t mean it was ideal. Far from it, for many countries. It’s not like the world was given a choice, really. Or, more accurately, the world’s choices were severely limited. Perhaps a majority of the world’s countries just saw US hegemony as the least bad option. But even those countries that didn’t agree that it was the least bad option, what were they supposed to do about it?
“You cannot put the genie back into the bottle,” Schelde said. “Things might get better and more calm a few months down the road, and Trump, he can’t be reelected, and the next president might be somewhat different,” Schelde said. “But what comes then in five, six, 10 years? I think there’s a strong realization across Europe that we need to be able to stand on our own feet.”
This is truly the silver lining in all of this. The world, especially Europe, has been far too complacent about continued US hegemonic dominance. They figured that the world was fine under US control, because US leadership was generally capable and trustworthy enough. But the thing about that kind of concentration of power is it’s not a matter of if that power will be abused, it’s only a matter of when.
The US has proven that we can no longer be counted on to rule competently and ethically enough. That doesn’t mean it’s time to replace US hegemony with another hegemonic order, it’s time for true, international democracy. It’s time for a democratic, rules based order.
The “preferences” of greedy, myopic takers must be disregarded in the face of reality, regardless of how politically difficult it is.
On that we agree. All the more reason to invest in building out non-car infrastructure in more densely populated areas NOW, so that the ever increasing number of people who are being priced out of the suburbs have a quality, affordable alternative. I think that’s better than putting those very same people through unnecessary pain, under some misguided belief that it will cause them to push the government to do what the damn government should have just done in the first place.
I wouldn’t consider those to be the same category.
I shouldn’t have implied that they were. I was just trying to distinguish both from urban areas, not necessarily trying to imply that they were the same. They are different.
Suburban areas are literally a scam perpetuated entirely by government policy (in the sense that, in the absence of regulation, people do not build that way) and should be abolished.
But that government policy is not arbitrary, it didn’t just happen for no reason. It exists to protect the value of detached, single family homes, which is important to the owners of those homes who see their home as an important investment. Indeed, for most people, the majority of their wealth is in their home. For that and other cultural reasons, people still want detached single family homes, and an area can’t be both relatively low density, single family homes and higher density multifamily and mixed used development simultaneously. It’s not physically possible, it has to be one or the other. I really don’t think that making car dependency more painful is just magically going to change people’s preferences, especially if no investment is made FIRST to ensure that better alternatives are available. People ain’t moving into higher density areas with non-car infrastructure if those areas don’t exist. You gotta build the shit first.
It does matter. It matters. And it’s so, so important that people understand that it matters. This attitude of, “the ends justify the means,” is very dangerous. The Iranian nation has had their autonomy taken away from them, first by Khamenei and now by the US and Israel. They are powerless, subject to the whims of people more powerful than them. They don’t make their own decisions about their own nation, the decisions are made for them by people who have enough guns and strongmen to impose their will on them.
Edit: think of it like this: let’s say you’re living down the street from a family with an abusive father. The guy is just cruel to his wife and kids. So one day you decide to take matters into your own hands and you go and shoot the dad dead. That’s good, right? The cruel, abusive father is dead, so it’s good and justified, right? But you didn’t ask the wife or the kids if they wanted their father to be killed. You didn’t care what they wanted, because you didn’t do it for them. You did it for you. You did it because it was what YOU wanted. And if they get mad at you for it, you say oh they’re just ingrates. They don’t appreciate what I did for THEM. But, it wasn’t for them. It was never for them. It was for you.
Edit 2: so what would the alternative be? What could we do to stop this cruel father that doesn’t require us to take matters into our own hands? Law. We need the rule of law. What would any reasonable person in a modern society do in this situation? They’d call the police. That’s what we need: the rule of law. Not countries deciding unilaterally who lives and who dies, but laws. Laws that apply to all of us, equally.