They built a network centric warefare with starlink and cheap android tablets down to the drone teams in the field.

They built a network of cheap acousting sensors (old phones) as passive sensors and using ML models to find the drones cheaply and increase the coverage. (Radars are expensive and easy to hit because they emit).

What they achieved is a "sensor fusion like" distributed system buid on cheap components and updated realtime. And all this is battle tested in the new environment of transparent battlefield (there is always a drone looking).

Also a lot of real-life electronic warfare stuff and drone applications.

This is what's missing in the US army. They are optimized for a symetrical 20th century warfare.

The check and balances of the US President that can start an offensive war is more a political problem, not "capitalism" problem.

The pseudo "entrepreneurs" who think they could outsmart the market by working less, are just naive. In a free market economy optimization is brutal and a freelancer developer will sell the same "product" cheaper, because he has the same technology available to him.

So the only way to get the gains from these AI technologies is to have something that can't be easily copied like market knowledge, data access or sweetheart deals with big companies that can pay more because their profits support the higher spend.

Also, services based SAAS especially B2B will not die, because a tyre shop won't have the time to write/debug/host it's own solution and will not want to depend to a single contractor who can disappear for a vacation. But the margins will go waaay down. 25$ for a set of forms and a database, not gonna cut it anymore.

You might be able to change the way the pie is sliced, but not grow it that way. Productivity is something in the realm of the real world not just philosophical categories of good/bad.

So 80 horse riders are out. You can't scale linearly, market is not supply bound usually, it's demand bound.

More people in the tribe = more people to swap with (larger market). More people who take the shitty low paid job = cheaper products.

If you don't have the cheap backpackers working shitty jobs in the hotels you won't get the tourists, who bring a lot of money in in places like Queenstown. Less money = less businesses = less jobs.

Offline world is a hard and unforgiving place. Either we find how to barter our skills/products or we rely on the taxes from the ones who are productive.

Many of the jobs that are low paid backpacker frendly, the locals aren't to keen to do. If you don't have them there, many busineses will close down, because margins can't support 100% local staff.

Housing in Australia is still one of the worst thing about the country, but in NZ is not much better, may be even worse. So New Zealand will become like Switzerland of the Oceania. It's the most beautiful country in the world and the Southern Island is a magical place.

Also, now it's less than 50% white, so it is a very diverse place, especially bigger cities like Auckland and Wellington. So in the bigger cities you can find a lot of good international food and culture too.

I think from a HN prespective if you have an internet business and don't mind the time zone difference and you're earining enough, NZ iz a fantastic place that is safe, clean, first world country, diverse and super beautiful, outdoor lover's paradise.

Sadly they were not produced since 2024, but they are very good.

BTW, if someone is selling, I'm buying to have more spares.

I've been holding out as you do for as long as I can but in 1-2 years the apps just stop working (some of them).

Taxes can be levied on productive businesses that are in ruthless competition in the free and international market. No productive businesses = nothing to redistribute. No international business == no imports. Everybody is poor and hungry.

Where will these resources will came from if the capitalist system is the most productive of them all? You can't redistribute something out of nothing. You need a healthy tax base to redistribute.

Childcare is just too regulated and people don't want to do it and ask for a premium on childcare.

Retirement in socialist country? Or in China before the capitalism came there? Or in a feudal society where your children where your insurance in the old age?

The capitalism is the least bad one where there the correlation between "making something that people want" to the value you can keep to feed yourself.

And no Tesla factories in Iran I suppose helps too :)