Turns out the US has just been a bully all along with no real ability to project power sufficiently to actually wage a war where it matters. China and Russia have both had front row seats to this embarrassment and have surely come to their own conclusions.

After all that post cold war hubris and 'end of history' nonsense. To think that the West's the old communist foes might come out on top. I have a strong feeling that we aren't just witnessing the decline of US imperialism, but liberal democracy itself (or at least the neoliberal flavour of it). This is the decline of the Western empire - led by the US. And self-inflicted to boot.

Yes, this is just my opinion.

Imagine filling your car with $1 worth of fuel and then driving it on flat terrain as far as it will take you. Now get out and push your car back. Friction and momentum aside, that's the astounding amount of energy/work we get from a dollar's worth of fuel.

Now imagine your car is actually an LLM model. It gets you a great distance on $1 worth of tokens but what happens when you run out and for whatever reason (I can imagine quite a few) further LLM use is not possible. You have to push your car/LLM back all by yourself to finish what was supposed to be a quick, convenient trip to the grocery store. Might've been better off walking.

Seriously though, I do think there is a real risk that LLMs are going to lure a lot of people far beyond their ability to swim back. It might even be the case that LLMs help strand people in situations that even the LLMs can't help rescue them from.

I do find it interesting that a lot of people (not trying to imply that you are one) bang on about incentives while also fighting tooth and nail in favour of weighting taxes toward earned income (derived from doing useful/productive things) instead of unearned income (derived from simply owning things).

I get that some people view all forms of tax as theft and while I appreciate their honesty, I simply can't take them seriously.

So is the private (ICE) motorcar. ~4000kg of CO2/y for typical US use.

SaaS will survive. We pay a lot for convenience. You'll never go wrong appealing to laziness ;)

A risk from the US point of view, but for many states, this is quite the opposite - these developments are in large part aimed at removing the risk of US financial abuse in the form of unilateral sanctions.

First I've heard of this. Do you know any more or could you maybe point me to a source? Kind of astounding if true! Agree that it would be very interesting to know what kind of output they got for all that effort.

There are people who think it's a good idea to aircondition service station forecourts. I find the irony of the situation tragically absurd. There's a little of that in the comment you are responding to.

> In the longer one, you need building and renting out shelter to be reasonably profitable, so that people do it.

I think they have. As mentioned above, the past 40 year trend of declining interest rates appears to be at an end. It was the most significant factor in rising prices in my opinion.

Who are the decision makers in western democracies?

I'm being slightly facetious - there are many answers to these questions.

The one that actually matters to me though is "do the people that are making the decisions do so in the interests of society?" Not in my 'democracy', that's for sure.

Personal choices matter.

And by FAR the most effective way to do that for the average person is to drive less.

Most people have no idea how far they need to drive to produce 1kg of CO2 (even though it's widely advertised alongside fuel efficiency).

Which, when you think about it, shows that the 'Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb' argument for this war is not exactly the true motivation (not to say that the US and Israel really don't want them to have a bomb).

This war is about trashing Iran. Adding it to the string of other failed states in the area. It would be more honest for Trump and Netanyahu to say that the motivation for this war is to ensure that Iran becomes a state that is incapable of developing the bomb (i.e. a failed and fractured, or weak and compliant).