None of that has to do with what I’m talking about. Fucking of course the US is the head of the bloc of capitalist countries and fucking of course they use the threat of violence to uphold their global position of power. But none of that relates to what I said in any meaningful way.
You could argue about how the US is bad until the cows come home and I’d most likely agree with all of it, but you’re talking past my basic point here.
Power within their own country, I meant, and it was abundantly clear. Also, I was talking about Western leaders in general, and even if your example is an argument against what I said it applies to only one country.
That’s not to defend the nuclear button or the US in general. But come on, my guy. We’re talking about the power they hold over the people and how they relate to the capital class, and the US’ dodgy nuclear weapons policies honestly have little to do with that.
Yeah fucking duh, but that wasn’t the point we were arguing, my guy.
What a surprising position from the leader of an apartheid state.
Makes sense. Loadshedding is a bitch, running generators is expensive and SA gets plenty of sunlight. Additionally (and perhaps most importantly) there are quite a few people who actually have the money to afford solar panels.
A lot of people are totally unwilling to pay for digital services, especially those that were originally free to access. Like yeah, it feels good to to call people on fb idiots I guess, but that’s not really an argument for their willingness to pay for fb.
Why? The Western political system is more resilient and powerful, but that means that the individual people who are part of that system (including the heads of state) have less power over that system they can exert by themselves.
Is the Western capitalist class more powerful? Yes. Are the political systems that function for their benefit more powerful? Also yes. But are the individuals who temporarily serve as heads of state more powerful within that system? Resoundingly no.
And yeah, the relationship between the Russian capital class and that of the Western capital class and the respective workers under their thumb is identical, but that doesn’t mean that the relationship they have with the political leaders is identical. In the West politicians are arguably more like well paid employees of the capitalists, while in Putin’s case there’s a more equal footing.
Does that make a difference to the people at the bottom? No. Does it make those situations identical? Also no.
Dumb take. Putin holds far more power as an individual within his country than any western head of state does - they are tools of the capitalist class more than anything else. Yes, neither Putin nor Western leaders care about working class people, but that doesn’t make them identical.
Uhu, exactly. I get that it’s frustrating, but the simple fact of the matter is that offering unlimited storage capacity (or unlimited anything for that matter) will inevitably attract people who will abuse it. Their new plans are functionally unlimited for most people, while also curbing that abuse.
That’s not to praise Dropbox too much (they shouldn’t have offered unlimited in the first place, but it’s an easy way to draw people in), but I still can’t fault them too much for how they handled this.
He doesn’t seem like a total shitlib, unlike the other three. He seems like the perfect guy to make libs think a bit farther than they otherwise would, and I can’t exactly fault him for that.
Makes sense, and their implemented solution also seems reasonable to me.
Man, I don’t know. I try to use the products from Google, Microsoft and co as little as possible, but it’s hard to completely cut them out of my digital life. I don’t think it’s really about drawing a line - because it’s terribly difficult to gauge how much data they actually have and how valuable a service is to you - but rather about trying to avoid those services as much as reasonably possible.
The challenge was to make people talk about it and to make them want one, and that required a vision more so than just solving the engineering challenges. Their choice to first make a sports car - the Roadster - didn’t come from the engineers.
Okay, but my point was about changing people’s minds about it being cool and a product you’d want to own. Tesla’s strategy was to make a sports car (the first Roadster) to show that electric cars could compete with combustion engine cars and to make people want one.
The engineers who solved the challenges needed to achieve that didn’t come up with that vision - that came from the top. Of course, that was because those guys had the money and could therefore dictate the direction, but if they wouldn’t have made that choice electric cars would most likely be mass adopted quite a few years later. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s why “engineers did the engineering work” isn’t an argument against my point.
Also, let’s be real; even now people talk about the engineers and designers being the driving force behind Tesla.
Also, side note, why do these points always mention the engineers and designers doing the actual work, and almost never the assembly workers for example?
The engineers and designers were not the people who changed the perception of electric cars - which was needed to got us to where we are now. Both the actual founders and Musk were instrumental in pushing this.
At most he stirred up some attention
Which was definitely needed, and which he does deserve credit for. He’s still a piece of shit regardless, but that doesn’t mean we should overlook and/or dismiss the part he actually did play.
Like yeah, you’re right about engineers and designers doing the actual engineering and designing work, but it’s a generic (though correct) dunk on Musk that has little to do with the point I’m making.
I despise the man, but there’s an argument to be made that Tesla accelerated the adoption of electric cars by at least five years, compared to what it otherwise would’ve been. I know he didn’t found Tesla, but I do feel like he played a pivotal role in changing people’s minds about electric cars.
It’s always DNS lol
Pigalle basket court in Paris, for anyone curious. Also the backdrop for this iconic music video for Thiago Silva by Dave.
My original comment was already about how Western leaders and Putin relate to both the capital and the working class. Your argument against this is one power that one Western leader holds that doesn’t even relate to class relations at all.
Like, I’m not denying the disproportionate power it gives the POTUS on the world stage, but that wasn’t what I was talking about in the first place.