We’ve been spending the last generation funneling as much money to the oligarchs as possible. We’ve seen what that did/does to Russia’s capabilities and we’re somehow surprised that it works the same way here too.

It takes a lot of sugar for it to act as a preservative. Like candy levels of sugar. Below those levels it’s part of a growth medium (i.e., food).

Of course he is.

He’s not the bar we need to rate everybody against, though. Being better than Trump is not enough. Let’s hold our government to reasonable standards.

We built an entire system based on perverse incentives and then act surprised at the outcomes.

In before “But… but… whatabout Trump!”

Americans aren’t lining up to do these jobs at low wages, without proper worker protections. Creating a society that depends on a lower tier of people that have fewer rights is seriously fucked up and is not something we should be embracing.

Siding with the rich business owners who are taking advantage of illegal immigrants is extra weird.

Not too far from the truth. The scientists are also putting random stuff in there just to see what it looks like!

But we really need to know what Random Internet Arbiter Of Truth has to say. That bot is why we come here.

Many of them are voting for Trump because the Democratic Party has abandoned them entirely for decades now. It’s stupid to fall for his lies, but he’s at least bothering to address them as a demographic in need of attention (with lies, of course).

Listening to NPR the other day, there was a piece on how many of the unions aren’t endorsing Harris (either candidate, actually) and that it’s because the working class whites men that make up the unions aren’t ready for a mixed-race female president. Of course jumping right to blaming the voters of bigotry instead of admitting that neither Harris, nor Biden or the party in general, has done anything to earn a union endorsement. If they were just bigots, wouldn’t they be endorsing Trump?

Trump is shit, but Biden’s hands are not even close to clean in this situation. He has done everything he could to allow the situation to escalate and the war is starting in earnest on his watch.

Let’s all be honest here and recognize when our team is doing the wrong thing also.

Who brought Trump into this comparison?

You can “win” this argument if you want to. I don’t really care. My issue was with Gates being described as a good hearted oligarch. I’m not trying to rank them or say that Gates is the worst or anything. Rewriting history so that Gates is a good guy is a bit much though.

I’m not going to give you a list, because I have other things to do, but you can read for yourself under Controversies here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates.

I was mostly thinking of the decades of anti-trust and “embrace, extend, extinguish”, as well as his sexual harassment of his employees. But I had forgotten that he was besties with Epstein and his wife divorced him after the extent of his endeavors there came out. So I guess child-raping may be on his list too.

Pretty swell guy.

Gates was (and arguably still is) an enormous asshole and has only recently started spending money on “charity” and PR to improve his public image (similar to Carnegie). That you’re willing to let him off the hook for all of his past evils only shows that spending a tiny fraction of their ill-earned gains on PR will wipe their slate clean and people like you will let them off the hook.

If you let Gates, Carnegie, etc off the hook for their rotten past, expect future generations to let Musk et al. off the hook once they buy back their reputation when they get old.

Should we really be propping up wealthy business owners by letting them create a underclass of desperate workers that can be deported at any moment?

Just because Trump is against something doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Broken clock and all.

Deportations aren’t the answer as much as actually prosecuting the “employers”, but having our economy dependent on unauthorized workers is not good at all.

I use this thing all the time. It will serve up ISOs and VMDK images also. It’s quite fast

I would argue that this sort of logical path wouldn’t be too shocking for the founders and they would just count on civility or elections to keep this from happening. The executive pardon itself is a fairly indefensible and corruption-facilitating loophole in the justice system.

Due to the very real and observable ratchet effect, the outcome of your strategy is that things actually get worse… just slightly slower than they otherwise would. Voting for the “lesser of two evils” will never, ever make things better. You need to take a risk and vote for a non-evil to even have a shot at making things actually better.

He’s the biggest liability to all of his companies. Good on SpaceX for firewalling him from the company as well as they do.

I think that Israel’s habit of constantly fucking with its neighbors makes it more of a liability to the interests of the US. It leads to more local hostility towards US troops in other regions in the area and attacks on US people and interests both abroad and at home (9/11).

A better approach would be to ally with indigenous democracies and help them maintain stability. First, our allies should be at least mostly compatible with our own national values (not theocracies, monarchies, apartheid states, etc). Secondly, allying with an indigenous nation instead of a bunch of settler colonists is less likely to draw the ire of every common person in the region.

Some Palestinian children and international aid workers are going to pay dearly for this.