Leo

Well-known member
being fed those thoughts all day by Fox News and social media just cements them in their minds.
 

Leo

Well-known member
nuts

Tesla's market value blew past $500 billion for the first time yesterday, making the company more valuable than most of the world's major automakers combined.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
They're to cars what dvd players were to video in the 90's. Hopefully within 20 years this species will have cut its transport emissions drastically as the technology rolls out. 20 years is a long time to hold your breath though. We could get a pro-coal Trump.V2 reboot of a sort yet.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The right package of progressive economics could redistribute gains, but a couple questions: 1) What're the moral limits of this? Does everyone deserve a piece of the future even if they're not participating in building it? A feeling of fairness permeates human psychology. Is there some baseline living standard people are owed, like having a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs? Perhaps. But most Americans who are angry right now have all these things.
How about if they get ill they can go to a hospital and - if possible - it makes them better, for free? From over here that seems like something everyone deserves. Obviously.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Material comfort doesn't ward off ennui: we have a long tradition, from My Year of Rest & Relaxation to A rebours to Roman emperors, etc showing that this is the case. You need purpose, and resources + too much time on your hands is as much a recipe for disaster as it is a progressive "solution."
A Rebours guy had a great time, covering turtles in jewels etc etc Roman emperors had sex orgies and food orgies, slaves, killed their enemies. Sounds great. If you have the right mind-set for it material comfort is fine.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
How many have they actually sold, though?
Edit: apparently fewer than 400k, compared to well over 5 million for Ford.
My dad bought one the other day. He sent us all (his kids I mean) pictures of it on the drive. Dunno why though, I doubt he believes in climate change.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Presumably he believes in flashy, high-status cars, though?
Maybe... I mean, using my extensive knowledge of cars I would describe the one he had before as "fairly standard" or "a red one" but I guess he's had some flash ones in the past.
 

sus

Well-known member
How about if they get ill they can go to a hospital and - if possible - it makes them better, for free? From over here that seems like something everyone deserves. Obviously.

This is the one that gets doled out whenever I want to ask questions like these, alongside higher-ed subsidies (which—an aside—is an area where smart economic policy and moral righteousness agree). It's an example that gets brought up because it feels like a no-brainer—"feels" because it's part of our ethical development as a culture ("Western civ"); we're right in the sweet-spot of the trajectory. It's contingent, not obvious in its own right—which is to say, it doesn't answer any of the philosophical problems of fairness or our debts to mankind, it just defers them. (For what, liberal common-sense empathy? Again, I agree, it sucks people go into terrible medical debt, that's just not the point.)

What I want is to get below what "feels obvious because all of our friends agree it's obvious." Again, I think these things feel obvious because of a historical set of political campaigns, policy priorities, geopolitical examples in the Nordlands, etc—not because of anything inherent in the "liberty." If you came up in a different culture even in your own country, you might have radically different intuitions about what's owed in the way of healthcare; you might even agree with the progressive instinct to empathy but disagree for logistical reasons. Our sense of rights and liberties are as constructed as everything else.
 

sus

Well-known member
is this true for the general pop. or just home owners?

I was talking about non-coastal and non-urban areas, but here in Wisconsin we have a 70% home ownership rate, and that's counting several big cities. I believe that's right on track with the national average. "The rent is too damn high" is true—but in cities and specifically in hot-commodity cities. Cities that are hot commodities in part for Brooklyn Culture Mafia reasons.
 

sus

Well-known member
@Linebaugh how's the rent where you're at? Without getting into details, it's mid-sized town/small-city New England/Midatlantic, right?
 

sus

Well-known member
I hear great things about the South. Get a good college town with $400 rent sounds like the dream.
 
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