But this money won’t probably be spent further in any ”productive” way, they will be locked in some financial tools that will only help extracting funds from the real sector, which is what one probably really cares about when they say that “money should work”. It’s not similar to a government investment in building a bridge which, while it’s also spending state money, creates ripples of economic activity involving thousands of people and dozens of industries.
That is a very broad generalization. Even if it was 'put into some fund', that equates to a capital investment which can be used to deliver value elsewhere.
Money is complicated - the only way in which I would see it get truly wasted is if you took it out as cash and burnt it. Even then you'll be (marginally) raising the value of all other money left in the system.
Interestingly, I believe that the reality is exactly the opposite: on the political regimes' spectrum of democratic -> authoritarian -> totalitarian only the middle one doesn't require people's participation. Both democracy and totalitarism need to be actively maintained by significant part of the population, otherwise they converge to the "natural" state of things - authoritarian order. None of the stuff you listed (fair laws, property rights, etc.) occur naturally once it has been set up at some point in past. That's why they talk about "checks and balances" all the time, and they are impossible without active participation.
I think the most significant distinction is exactly that:
Authoritarian - leaves people alone in general as long as they stay out of politics. Examples: 90% of regimes throughout human history. Almost all post-soviet countries, almost all of Middle East and Africa, Singapore, etc.
Totalitarian - forces people into actively participating in leader's political goals and penetrates the daily life. North Korea, USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy.
The distinction is fuzzy, but I think what is meant here is more directly political. In a totalitarian system, it is considered important for everyone to know and openly and regularly support state ideology with words and deeds. In the least totalitarian but authoritarian system, the state just wants apathy and obedience from its citizenry.
So it would be totalitarian leaning for a leader to make a speech (watching is mandatory btw) saying that buying foreign is anti-patriotic and generating social censure, in addition to the tariffs, for people seen with foreign goods.
>it is considered important for everyone to know and openly and regularly support state ideology with words and deeds.
People literally do this on social media and they aren't even being forced.
As for the remainder, I do see the forced part but I'm not sure of how meaningful that is. If I don't agree with Trump but I'm forced to watch his speeches what does this do?
As for supporting state ideology, while not forced, there are hats, bumper stickers, flags to identify yourself
Imagine Trump forced everyone to wear his MAGA hat. What effect does it have? I don't think being forced to do this and that has much value
> People literally do this on social media and they aren't even being forced.
I think applying the authoritarian-totalitarian distinction in a democracy gets weird because democracies like totalitarian systems but unlike the archetypal authoritarian system expect the average person to engage in politics. So it's not a straight spectrum from democracy to totalitarian with autocracy in the middle.
And if someone forces everyone to wear their symbols, then it becomes obvious who the open dissenters are, and it becomes hard to tell who is neutral, who is enthusiastic, and who is silently dissenting, everyone looks like a supporter and people may start becoming more supporting simply because of apparent social consensus.
Anyway, here's what Wikipedia has to say. Maybe it clears up
> In exercising the power of government upon society, the application of an official dominant ideology differentiates the worldview of the totalitarian régime from the worldview of the authoritarian régime, which is "only concerned with political power, and, as long as [government power] is not contested, [the authoritarian government] gives society a certain degree of liberty."[6] Having no ideology to propagate, the politically secular authoritarian government "does not attempt to change the world and human nature",[6] whereas the "totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens",[5] by way of an official "totalist ideology, a [political] party reinforced by a secret police, and monopolistic control of industrial mass society."[6]
Although you're replying to a weird question indeed, your comment makes a lot of claims that doesn't correlate with my observations. Do you have some stats to support this?
> EVs are already cheaper than ICE cars when it comes to Total Cost of Ownership
Are you talking about Norway or in general? Because overall I highly doubt that if we're talking about US/EU markets. In Norway EVs are heavily subsidized and ICEs are on the contrary taxed, so this might be true there. But in Europe ICE cars of comparable class are probably cheaper when looking at TCO, especially given abysmal depreciation of EV batteries. From quick googling it seems that EVs are _sometimes_ cheaper when one factors in tax cuts and/or subsidies and only on the horizon of ~4 years +- one year. Given the average lifetime of a car of ~10 years (now closer to 12), EV will be much, much more expensive than ICE when averaged across population.
EVs are cheaper than ICE cars in China or if they are imported from China without tariffs. Do we really want to go that way?
> save 30 million dollars on the project due to decreased requirement for active ventilation
> The number of car fires in Norway is going down, as EVs are ~10-20 times less likely to catch fire
These sound like a rounding error when estimating net effects of EV vs ICE.
> Norway can already measure significant decreases in air pollution. What impact do you think that has on the public health insurance expenses?
Norway always had exceptionally clean air. I think that this impact is not measurable.
Oh yes it does ha ha. As my bio says I'm a furry so I've been experimenting with ML participants for spicier variants of role play games and even GPT3.5 performs very well. Could probably slice up some examples if I needed to but they are very NSFW/intensely hackernews unfriendly.
What baffles me about this "gang-related" cases of violence is that it's presumably over drug money. And Sweden has rather low drug consumption level and is essentially cashless, so any transaction larger than shopping for groceries goes via a bank. And Swedish banks are very transparent and compliant and have very strict KYC/AML rules. I once had to explain to the bank why my friend transferred me an equivalent of $200 and every ATM deposit as well, even if it's $20. How the fuck are the drug money passed around in enough quantities to warrant "gang wars" here?
It's not always about money, it's also hurt pride and dumb principles.
That's why in Sweden you see these "gangs" that are essentially one family, one "clan" is what they often call them in media.
Just like the early italian mafia in the states I guess, one patriarch, their sons, their son's friends, their cousins, their nephews. They're all related somehow, and they enter into blood fueds over hurt pride that just snowball.
From what I could quickly google, there is this report from The Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs [1] which says that at least for students the number is 50% lower than EU average (p. 28).
Don’t believe the lies from the Swedish anti-drug organizations. They are fueled by religious zeal, not science.
It is probably true that Sweden has a below average cannabis usage, compared to the rest of Europe, but recent studies from the Swedish customs(?) show much higher numbers.
Smoking pot in Sweden is incredibly taboo - so those who do keep their mouths shut about. Still plenty of people do it, we had the internet early on and could see through the propaganda.
I was fairly open about smoking(and growing) while I lived in Sweden so I got to know and discuss this issue quite well. It is one of the reasons I no longer live in Sweden - on paper it is free and democratic, but if you go against the group think there will be consequences.
Here in Chicago business is a secondary cause of murders. The biggest reason is honestly just fragile egos. If one of your opps posts something on social media about you or writes a song dissing you the street ethos many have bought into requires you to kill them. Honestly the biggest cause of violence is fragile egos.
>If one of your opps posts something on social media about you or writes a song dissing you the street ethos many have bought into requires you to kill them.
Relevant:
TIL that Chicago street gangs today identify themselves by song. By listening to what drill music (a Chicago form of gansta rap) is playing, youths can tell which gang's territory they are in, or even when gangs are working together.
<https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5t7ig0/til_th...>
To put another way, I've heard it said that drill rap may be the first music genre that becomes extinct because its practitioners kill each other off.
And again the same question: I have a friend who had to physically go to the restaurant to get a confirmation that he in fact had paid about $250 for dinner for six people and they then swished him back. How will you explain hundreds of transactions a month when you don't even have an official source of income?
Yes, but I mean it should presumably be very hard to even spend the money for the sellers here, let alone to launder them, which will be needed if you're selling all the time.
Buying a gun is a very rare transaction happening 100% in the physical world and leaving no traces per se. Receiving/spending money here is digital in 99% of cases and is recorded forever.
As a wannabe libertarian, I believe in freedom of speech and information. But if I had to choose a single topic of all that has to banned, it would be this.
Due to several cognitive biases human perception tends to lean towards black & white depiction of the world. In nuclear war topic black is "we all are gonna die so there is no point to use the nukes" and white is "well, it's not that bad after all, maybe we could nuke those evil Russians/Americans". Black depiction must be maintained in public space even if the preconditions are false. The Overton window must stay where it is now.
Interesting that your comment exemplifies the black & white depiction of the world that you describe. A grey depiction is exactly as the article describes - nuclear war would be bad but here are its realistic effects, and here are ways that you can protect yourself from the worst of these effects.
There's a communalist vs. individualist divide here. It may be better for everyone if everyone believes that nuclear war is unspeakably bad and so is off the table as an option. However, it's better for an individual, given that they can't influence world events, if they're armed with a realistic portrayal of nuclear war and steps they can take to protect themselves.
If you want to force people to lie or remain silent about what you consider a dangerous truth despite it being discernibly false in order to maintain a convenient fiction soviet style you probably aren't actually a libertarian.
Well, yeah, this is an imaginable scenario, because it's impossible to "ban" such things because of Streisand effect. I would oppose anything like this in the real world.
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