I use my wife. She’s an artist, and has an eye for such things.

Agreed. With the added bonus that we have too live in the system while we burn it down. I’m not a huge fan of the idea, but then, I’m a maintainer by nature.

I have nifty tech, yes, but I also have vaccination deniers, Nazis, and my fourth “once in a lifetime” economic crises. I’m never going to buy a house. I’m never going to retire. I’ll probably never even pay off my student loans.

I personally think that, largely speaking, if imports are cheaper than local production, that’s a good thing!

I’m hardly an economist, right? But I agree with you, broadly speaking. But first covid, and now Trump round two is showing is the weakness of global integration. As long as everything goes smoothly, it’s jam for everyone. But let something screw up the logistics, or someone duck up the balance of trade, and everything can go to shit really fast. There are lots of things we can’t make here, but we rely on them. That is less than ideal.

I don’t know that tariffs are the way to address that issue, or even if it needs to be addressed at all. O do know that the way Trump is doing it is all wrong.

I’d go with “deshittification,” myself. It’s not important how or why they are shit, just that they are, and the laws in question prevent us from fixing it.

The airport tried that shit on me today. I was able to make it print me a boarding pass, though.

I’m becoming a luddite in my middle age.

I think that’s a feature, not a bug.

I’m old enough to remember them promising, repeatedly, that the nude scanners didn’t, couldn’t save images.

Joke’s on them though. They can’t delete my pictures fast enough to avoid the trauma.

Most of us are not getting richer, nor working shorter hours, nor living better than our parents. We’re past “services” and on into “parasites.”

In principal, tariffs can prop up domestic industry that is having trouble competing with cheaper imported products. In practice, this winds up being really complicated, because the world is a lot more interdependent than it was 80 years ago.

I agree with you that the systems we have built keep the powerful in power. That’s what they get out of the deal.

But the point of civilization has less to do with them, and more to do with interactions between regular people. If I have a dispute with you, for example, over some property, we can call on lawyers, police, regulatory bodies and similar to help us settle our dispute. We maybe don’t like the resolution, but, by and large, we accept it.

Without those systems, I could just beat you up, and take the property for myself. You’re only real option would be to kill me, and take it back.

Similar, we can do things like vote out our leaders, or move to other places. We have options besides burning down the castle, or setting up a guillotine.

Civilization is about giving us that alternative.

That’s wife material, that is.

And you are missing mine.

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The government gives the working class a way to have their grievances heard and addressed in a way other than starting a rebellion.

Yes, it serves to keep the powerful in power, but that’s irrelevant to my point. It also serves to make sure the little people get taken care of well enough that we don’t kill the ones in power.

For a more specific example, see unions. The alternative to unions is plant managers getting killed.

That’s not why we built them. They got hijacked for that, and they need fixing.

They were built so we had an alternative to killing each other over disputes.

Violence is almost always the solution. Civilization is an effort to find a better solution. But people who reject the systems we’ve built up seem to forget why we built then.

If pancakes aren’t saiting you, then you need to eat more of them.

But seriously, it’s just a case of what you’re used to.

In my experience, bacon and pancakes take a fair bit of time to make, but not a great deal of effort or attention. They are perfect for a lazy Saturday morning, and I can talk and socialize with the cook while they are being prepared, or as the cook while I prepare them. Compare to dinner which is either a whole production that keeps me in the kitchen and requires my attention, or tossing something frozen in the oven for an hour.

In general, no, you will not be provided services at no cost. If you want to go back to the post office, they will require you to buy stamps.

If you won’t pay cash, then you have to pay data.

I’m sorry, let me explain what I meant by “at all.”

If a brain-dead MAGA cultists mouthbreather might suspect that you are “one of them brown people,” (you’ll forgive me for not using a term more accurate to their actual speech patterns) then you might reconsider. If you’re white, by the standards of people who still fly Confederate flags, you might do ok.

That said, I am given to understand that our immigration system is a nightmare, and expensive. I don’t know which nations might be easier or cheaper, but I recommend anywhere but here.

If you’re Arabic at all, it’s certainly unwise, and might be impossible to become an American citizen at this time.

On the other hand, I believe Trump is selling citizenship cards for 5 million dollars.