I would rather see more investment on better renewable tech then relaying on biohazard.

Modern nuclear energy produces significantly less waste and involves more fuel recycling than the historical predecessors. But these reactors are more expensive to build and run, which means smaller profit margins and longer profit tails.

Solar and Wind are popular in large part because you can build them up and profit off them quickly in a high-priced electricity market (making Texas’s insanely expensive ERCOT system a popular location for new green development, paradoxically). But nuclear power provides a cheap and clean base load that we’re only able to get from coal and natural gas, atm. If you really want to get off fossil fuels entirely, nuclear is the next logical step.

One of the saddest bits of the show was when they kinda just gave up talking about socio-economic issues and made the whole show revolve around Homer being a big dumb-dumb.

Some of the harshest criticism they had around nuclear power revolved around its privatization and profitization. A bunch of those early episodes amounted to people asking for reasonable and beneficial changes to how the plant was run, then having to fight tooth and nail with the company boss for even moderate reform.

Again, I agree, but my comment was about automobiles.

Nearly 40% of Honda’s automobile production took place in China in the last financial year.

Honda would continue to keep its supply chain in China for the domestic market in the world’s second-largest economy while building a separate one for markets outside of China, the Sankei said. It did not say where it got the information.

That’s not “pulling out of China”. That’s a sign of Chinese domestic automobile consumption rising.

Biden has expanded Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to include more imports.

I haven’t seen much to suggest he’s enforcing it. These laws are consistently toothless, in the same way more and more of our regulatory system is toothless.

It’s the age old problem of a wise despot.

When you’re governing wisely, there is no need to be despotic. Conflicts and contradictions necessitate a large militant police state to keep the lower class in line. But when you’ve got generous surpluses and a rising quality of life, people are generally happy and easy to govern.

Patreon alone is not enough for most creators to make a living

I’ve seen a number of content creators argue otherwise. From the “Hello from the Magic Tavern” sketch comedy group to the “Scenes from the Multiverse” Cartoonist to the various musicians cranking out indie tunes on Bandcamp, the refrain I consistently here is that direct patronage offers significantly better returns than ad-supported payments on bigger media platforms.

Indie creators generally have an easier time of securing monthly subscriptions because they’re more boutique and have closer connections to the audience. And you don’t need an enormous audience to bring in a reliable income. While YouTubers need to get into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to see any kind of productive ROI, Patreon artists can justify the expense of their work on an audience in the hundreds. They can go entirely indie with an audience in the thousands.

Most creators can’t afford to go fully indie, but the margins are so much better relative to the audience size with direct payments. Even just $2/viewer/episode pays vastly more than what a streaming service offers.

Large professional centrally planned economies do a better job of managing scarce resources than a pack of ill-informed and uncoordinated Wall Street Lemmings.

They’ve since been pulling out of China

Firstly, no they haven’t. US trade with China has only ever increased year-over-year going back to the 1960s.

Secondly, our hunger for cheap labor is sending us to penal colonies across the rest of the Pacific Rim. This isn’t something that began or ended with a single factory in a single country.

Many nations are cracking down on imports related to Uyghur labor.

They’re not. The business is just being laundered through front companies.

Upon the review of the ASPI report, Skechers said it contacted senior management at Luzhou prior to conducting two additional audits of the factory — none of which revealed any indications of forced labor. Luzhou, however, did confirm that members of the Uyghur ethnic group did comprise a portion of its workforce but were employed under compliant terms and conditions.

Shoving thumbs in my ears and saying “I don’t see the non-compliance, its all fine actually!” and letting the provisions go completely unenforced.

And that’s before you get into direct sales through Ali Baba and Temu

There are plenty of automobiles manufactured in the US, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the UK

And they’re all complicit. BMW, Volkswagon, Jaguar Land Rover all source parts from China.

In fact, the entire US supply chain is reliant on Chinese parts.

Earlier this month, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) said it would be temporarily halting production at a plant in Kragujevac, Serbia due to a lack of parts from China, while Hyundai and Renault have done the same in South Korea.

You can whitewash your supply chain by slapping an western label on Chinese parts. But this isn’t demonstrating any kind of concern for labor rights or ethical insourcing. FFS, we won’t even let Volkswagon plants in Tennessee unionize.

Nevermind Uyghur slave labor. Americans can’t even bargain for better salaries. Its too much for our fragile economy to handle.

I’m a big fan of Patreon.

Like that was the time to wake up and hate every single one of these content creators for selling out

And then what? Stop consuming their content?

Electric cars in the US are more expensive mostly due to higher costs of overhead. For example, we have a minimum wage, and China uses forced labor.

• Inside the brutal reality of prison labor where U.S. inmates face injury and lost limbs to fuel major corporations’ supply chains

• In China, men currently can retire at 60 years of age, while women who work in factories can retire as early as 50. Female public-sector workers can retire at 55. Each year 3 million Chinese retire. Many retirees have a lot of time and limited resources. They like to hang out in the streets chatting with their friends or congregate in parks doing tai chi, ballroom dancing or some other activity. One elderly man told the New York Times, “Many old Chinese loving fly kites because it can take up much time, and its cost is free.”

:-/

Is this really the same group of people that want US businesses to divest from Israel, defending products made with the slave labor of Uyghurs?

Americans are just mad that we have a perfectly good exploitable population at home.

This isn’t competition, it sounds like the CCP heavily subsidises the manufacture

China: “Here, have a bunch of cheap electric vehicles to replace your aging fleet of ICE engines. Don’t worry, we’re picking up a part of the tab.”

Americans: “What a great deal! We’ll buy them in droves.”

State Government: “Not so fast! This wouldn’t be fair to honest, hard working domestic car companies like Tesla and Volvo and Toyota.”

Thinking in decades or centuries is a very powerful tool!

Shame we’re only capable of thinking about the next quarter’s profits.

Ah yes, the comparable states of Hawaii, Quebec and Crimea which famously issue their own passports, have their own heads of state, pass their own laws and are not subject to the laws of parent states.

Each of these regions has its own governor and its own municipal laws.

Taiwanese residents who regularly travel to China carry a distinct Chinese passport precisely because the Taiwanese passport isn’t recognized. In fact the Taiwanese passport is notorious for how many problems it causes with international travel.

And thanks to the US defense pact, Taiwan is heavily beholden to US sanctions, trade restrictions, and travel embargoes. Taiwan isn’t independent, it is occupied territory. Much the same way as Crimea is occupied by Russia.

you’ve wandered much to far from your safe space

Its always fun to see people encounter some facts they haven’t seen before and conclude “These facts have simply been misplaced! I’m not supposed to be hearing them. They belong in somewhere else.”

someone could come up with a meaningful definition of a country that would exclude Taiwan, but include all other countries

The classical definition of sovereignty doesn’t apply to Taiwan, no matter how you slice it. They’re not a country in the same way that Palestine and Hawaii and Quebec and Crimea aren’t countries.

its historic debt to Jewish people

One would assume this debt would be repaid with German lands and monies, rather than land and money looted from Arabs a continent away.

Honestly, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, the German state should just do what their other genocide victim, Namibia, told them to do and Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Yeah, crazy how the Germans are full throated supporters of Israel, but you never see them waving big Nambia flags and asserting the rights of African state sovereignty. I’m forced to wonder why, as I flip through my history book of “German Prime Ministers After 1949”.

Granting Israelis the right to Lebensraum.

They deny your citizenship on the grounds that you are a member of Hamas.

I’ll notify Julian Assange.

Taiwan is already independent.

Its territorial waters are absolutely swarming with US and Chinese warships. Its economy is fully dependent on exports to its major trade partners. Its currency is in an inflationary spiral as it becomes increasingly beholden to foreign reserves to do business. The Taiwanese Diaspora is the same size as the island population, with most of the local developed property owned by these Overseas Taiwanese expats.

They don’t control their borders or territorial waters. They don’t have meaningful sovereignty. They aren’t agriculturally or economically self-reliant. They’re just a spot on the board for the superpowers to fight over.

Because South Koreans don’t have ambitions of building up a large militant ex-pat community to try a Bay of Pigs on Pyongyang.