This seems to be a very common issue on HN, I've noticed. People are constantly conflating how the world works with how it should work. And, when others point this out, they're immediately accused of endorsing something morally, when really they're just stating a fact about the world, human nature, or geopolitics.

Exactly who do you think is going to stop them? The citizens of Western nations may sympathize with Taiwan, but that's very different from them being willing to send their sons and daughters to fight and die for someone else's country.

If China decides to invade Taiwan, I don't see anyone realistically trying to stop them militarily. I imagine a bunch of nations will "strongly condemn" their actions, but I would be shocked if the West is even willing to impose economic sanctions in that scenario.

If evolution could select out poor technology we wouldn't have MS Windows. In fact, it's rather rare for the best solution from a technological standpoint to win out. It has a lot more to do with scale, influence, market share, and making the right deals. Competition only selects for the best in a reasonably healthy market, which we haven't had in the tech space in quite some time.

Or everyone else starts fighting that 10% once they get tired of scraps.

How are statistics going to answer this question? Statistics are used to measure things. They don't tell you what things you should be measuring.

> Who is going to be buying the products and services if no-one has money to throw around?

I've wondered about this myself. People keep talking about the trades as a good path in the post-AI world, but I just don't see it. If huge swaths of office workers are suddenly and permanently unemployed, who's going to be hiring all these tradesmen?

If I were unemployed long-term, the one upside is that I would suddenly have the time to a do a lot of the home repairs that I've been hiring contractors to take care of.

The other thing I worry about is the level of violence we're likely to see if a significant chunk of the population is made permanently unemployed. People bring up Universal Basic Income as a potential, but I think that only address a part of the issue. Despite the bluster and complaints you might hear at the office, most want to have the opportunity to earn a living; they want to feel like they're useful to their fellow man and woman. I worry about a world in which large numbers of young people are looking at a future with no job prospects and no real place for them other than to be made comfortable by government money and consumer goods. To me that seems like the perfect recruiting ground for all manner of extremist organizations.

Well, now you've heard it. And you're right, it sounds absurd. I wish it were satire, but there are people in positions of power here in the U.S. who think this is good policy.

Tell that to the Taliban or the Vietnamese. They took on a massively more powerful military, were significantly outgunned, and came out of it in control of their respective countries. If there's anything we can learn from history it's that war is incredibly chaotic and unpredictable, and that anyone making bold and confident predictions is just about guaranteed to have reality prove them wrong.

It was quite literally a slogan and rallying cry.

This is quickly becoming the norm for experts, unfortunately. I keep seeing more an more people with educational expertise in something that they have zero hands-on or practical experience with.

I remember being at a social event once and chatting with someone who was a business professor at any Ivy League university. Making small talk, I asked him which companies he'd worked at, and he told me that he had gone the academic track and started teaching during and after getting his PhD (in exactly what I don't remember). I remember being stunned that students would pay over $60k a year to learn about business from someone who'd never worked for or started a business.

I keep seeing arguments like this. They sound like a bit like a form of nihilsm. Do you really think we shouldn't worry about risks to the environment simply because we're all hypocrites on that front in one way or another? I get the frustration and have been guilty of using this type of argument myself in the past, but refusing to discuss a problem because the people raising the concern are imperfect human beings doesn't seem like a tenable position.

I remember a few years ago, being shocked to see that over 50% of applicants for a software engineering role applied directly from their smartphones. So it's not even just normies who see their phone as "the computer".

It's not up to me to decide if a given employer does or does not pay enough. If people don't want to work for your company, then you're not paying enough relative to your expectations around the job. That's not anyone's opinion, it's just how prices work.

Because bashing all things American while ignoring the threat posed by China is part of Europe's cultural DNA.