Zompist Bboard Again

But less so in Japan, for a simple reason: they build more housing. People really tie themselves into knots on this one issue, but housing is not an exception to the general rule that when you make more of something it costs less. Japan builds about 6.9 housing units per thousand residents, Califor...

Future generations will be as surprised that the online crossword company has a press bureau as we are that the people who give stars to restaurants have tire factories. Remnids me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQIpoIH1bCA Liberals do, and they love patting themselves on the back for it. Righ...

Mainstream media as in magazines and newspapers? They more often supported Harris than Trump. What is now mainstream? Musk was rolling for Trump in order to lay off as many workers as he feels like and because he begrudges his child for being trans. And it was Musk that converted Rogan. I'm not thi...

Problem is, Labour are the incumbents now. In the runup to the election, it became more and more clear that a block of wood painted grey could beat the Tories, and Keir Starmer seems to have handled that by basically running as a block of wood painted grey. But while you can beat unpopular incumben...

There might have been a bit of a misunderstanding here in this discussion when some people here took "counter-intuitive" to mean "bad", or "false", or "wrong". My point is that the biggest factor that determines whether somebody considers an idea "counte...

All interesting ideas but aren't you worried right-wingers are inherently better at populism? I'm personally afraid they are. There's something in the conservative belief system that lends itself to Trumpism, I think -- conservativism is kind of simple and intuitive; socialism (if that's what you'r...

Some more thoughts of mine about the election, since some time has passed: There used to be a streamer called Destiny who has been debating the alt right since before 2016. He was very gentle at first. He even avoided woke language and tried to make friends with communities of alt right hosts. By no...

I'll have to look into this. Further reading/watching: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/jesse-ventura-donald-trump-copied-minnesota-governor-campaign/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LazUZz3K6IY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWq2QvvPw68 Talking Points Jesse Ventura says Donald Trump "c...

You can be 100% accurate about everything, but people just won't listen when they don't trust you. And why don't people trust liberals? The deterioration of unions and abandonment of working people in general probably has something to do with it. I think the 2028 Democratic candidate should be (no ...

By when midterms come (provided America still has free and fair elections then) people seeing how much of a clusterfuck Trump's policies really are, and considering their past votes for him having been a poor choice? So you're just okay with constantly losing half the time to fascists? got it. As y...

Umm it was very obvious what the Republicans stood/stand for and what they were planning to do (the Republicans did nothing to hide it), so anyone who could vote and didn't vote for Harris frankly was/is necessarily either stupid/ignorant (i.e. they didn't realize what Trump was/is for and was/is p...

I wish I could exchange a thousand dollars (if necessary) for a pair of good, durable shoes that properly fit my feet, but as far as I've been able to tell, this is not possible, because whatever market existed for (necessarily expensive) shoes handmade by people who knew what they were doing in th...

Not much. My point wasn't that capitalism is so great, but that it used to be better at producing consumer goods than it is now. However, most capitalist countries were traditionally pretty good at producing housing, education, and healthcare. When you say this, I feel like you must be describing M...

Doesn't that require a lot of fussy bookkeeping? Maybe, but it would be built in, invisible to the customer, and it would be no more intrusive or difficult than the tracking that underlies the ad network. (Some visibility is good, e.g. on your monthly bill, so you can adjust your usage.) ISPs alrea...

Now, micropayments never worked because no one wants to allocate $0.30, or $0.03, or whatever, every time they access a web page. To make it work, it'd have to be built into the system, and automatic-- probably an extra charge from your ISP. You'd need a tracking system to distribute the money... b...

I don't know how to explain the US though! One thing I don't understand, for instance, is why the Silicon Valley used to be able to turn out good products in the 2000s and 2010s -- Gmail, Google Maps, even Twitter (which, surprising as it may seem, was an interesting place and not a huge troll farm...

I've been the leftist economics rant guy here from around 2019. lol Once more a taste of my spiel: I used to think the right's proto-Marxist rhetoric can be developed into scientific socialism. This might be possible in some cases. Nowadays, I'm inclined to think it's an adaptive mind virus that's ...

for people surprised that mail delivery would pick up from the house, what is the arrangement where you're at? do you get mail delivered to your house but not picked up from it?? or some other system Yes, pretty much! In the UK, most houses have a letterbox, a flap in the front door which the postm...

As for the idea that a Trump victory would somehow lead to a net win for socialism -- I'm sorry, but that's just magical thinking. I never said that it would. You miss the point. As a socialist, I could be like jcb here and insist that I will only support any candidates that support socialism. But ...

political candidates and parties need to earn people's votes I can't help but notice how I repeated this same idea. Sure, for example, in theory, if there was a far left voter, and there were only two viable parties to vote for, it would make sense for them to vote for the lefter one, no matter how...