Regardless of who is pulling the strings, they should be negotiating and ending conflict, like in the Minsk agreements, which were torn down by the west. In fact, Angela Merkel herself stated in 2022 that the 2014 peace agreements were an attempt to give Ukraine time to militarize and eventually join NATO.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-are-minsk-agreemen...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-loss-trust-w...

Instead, we get regurgitation of tired propaganda and heavily misleading narratives. If the world looks exceptionally confusing and chaotic, or if the world is fully of irrational boogeymen, that's just because you don't have the right perspective yet.

The geopolitics community knows the situation well, and doesn't look at Trump as a big scary orange man. They look at Trump as another American elite, who's been elected during a chaotic time in American society. You can also look up Jeffery Sachs (social democrat) who speaks at length about these issues.

I've mostly lost faith in the conversations on here. HN mostly is a competition about who can sound the most fancy. The actual content of the discussion has become tertiary. At this point, my only goal is to reach out to those who are open minded and haven't heard these other perspectives. To hell with internet points.

These demonstrate that this expansionism is real, Ukraine is not truly sovereign, and Russia was forced into a horrendous position where they have to decide between a humanitarian crisis now, or potentially a much bigger humanitarian crisis down the line if all NATO member states engage in war with Russia, a large Nuclear power.

Many blame NATO/USAID/CIA for creating this situation over many decades, even though they knew it would come to this.

Nuland call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoW75J5bnnE Kissinger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHm_7T7QNl8

P.S. I should say that I also hate Putin for being a murderous oligarch, so take that however you will. But let's be real, he's been warning against this for decades.

The call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoW75J5bnnE

I do not, and will never regard a country as sovereign at this level of intervention.

I would argue all days

> Is there an option C for both

absolutely :)

Yes, capital (machinery, raw materials) does make up a much greater proportion of the over value added to items as compared to labor, but it's still not automated enough to let go of the requirement of human labor, not anywhere in the world. You can only say that it's fully automated when no more people are involved meaningfully in the process of production.

Ergo, it is not "functionally fully automated", because humans still work.

> Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.

There is no basis for this. We're already struggling to find meaningful, productive employment for many people as a society. This is the same as "it will be X in the future because it was always X in the past".

Sorry, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Humans work significantly more today than compared to 1000 years ago. Most humans don't even have cushy office jobs on this planet, they labor in factories, fields, mines, forests, farms, etc... so "functionally" it's about the worst that it has ever been. Maybe the work looks different, but it's still work.

I think the next 1000 years of society/social relations between people will be more directly defined by human nature itself rather than actual material conditions, because some of the major constraints on how society can function will be lifted.

The opportunity cost of entering a relationship with someone lower in your ranking system is to forego a relationship with someone higher in that system down the line. It makes sense to err on the side of picky if there's a tangible 'gain' to it, purely strategically speaking.

This is active propaganda. You think the Gov spends billions on propaganda overseas and they make no effort internally? I mean think about it for a moment.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#External...

> The point wasn't that Americans can talk about anything we want

Did you even read my comment?

> it's that the Chinese can't talk about the "bad" things that have happened in their country

Wrong / highly misleading. Do you really think a country of 1.4 billion people can raise themselves out of poverty and overall dramatically raise the living standards for the masses without having a government that listens to the concerns of the people all across the country?

> If you log into Rednote and ask "What happened on June 4th," you're going to get banned by Chinese censors

I bet you the entire GDP of Canada that you don't know "what happened on June 4th".

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html

What you are describing here, anti-establishment propaganda, is precisely the reasoning cited for the TikTok ban to begin with, and exactly the reason China has their firewall. So... uh... yeah?

Also VPN's are widely used in China so it really doesn't support your claim.

> Whereas most Americans know that health insurance is some babyback bullshit that might have worked at one time but doesn't work anymore; and that cost of living is too high in certain cities

Exactly! This proves how structurally powerless American freedom of speech is to enact real change. How is it that there were able to secure social services and unprecedented poverty reduction, or even had the political desire to?

> The fact that we're sitting here typing at each other about it is proof positive.

This proves precisely zero things. This isn't even related to anything you said.

"The fact that we're discussing how broken healthcare is proves everything is fine!"