alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]

Just because a river flows south doesn’t mean you couldn’t find an eddy in the currents that flows north for a few seconds.

But the water still has nowhere to flow but south. If the cost was less than expected return, these companies would do this research internally. Even if for just one moment, one tiny aspect of the program did make a profit, it wouldn’t change the nature of the system.

If NASA was a profitable enterprise, it wouldn’t require external funding, and Lockheed and co would be doing that research themselves to keep that profit for themselves.

NASA isn’t like CNSA or Roscosmos in that they don’t make their own rockets. It exists first and foremost to funnel money to aerospace contractors by either directly contracting with them or providing R&D in cases where cost/risk is greater than expected profit.

A similar relationship exists with publicly funded universities selling patents to pharma.

getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement

I’m pretty certain neither party supports this. After 2020, every state and city, including dem-run ones increased police funding.

If you’re talking about republicans complaining about the FBI because it went after Trump, they’re just as likely to abolish prisons because some jan 6ers got convicted. These people like those institutions too much when they’re doing their primary purpose of neutralizing leftist political movements.

Also you’re not private property nor do you own significant capital. It’s not your law enforcement.

I know right? Of course it’s sold at a loss, that’s why NASA is paying Boeing to do the research.

Can’t have Boeing waste money on R&D, that would hurt their shareholders.

Both sides developed jet engines. The allies didn’t get them into a fighter until after the war though.

Whether the initial protesters had good reason or not, fascists quickly co-opted the movement in the same way they co-opted the liberal protests in Ukraine.

Hungary doing something 65 years later doesn’t justify the actions of the Soviets.

Their actions 65 years later prove there were significant numbers of nazis waiting in the wings, and that the soviets were insufficiently oppressive.

Well eminent domain says we have to pay you a fair rate for the house. The property was taxed $2000 and earned no income last year so here’s a bill for $40,000.

OK, is there a more recent case where you believe supporting the US over critically supporting its opposition is vindicated by history?

You’re not gonna find any utopian communists on hexbear, they’re almost all marxists.

Were smoking it in a dangerous or threatening way?

What exactly was wrong with Kruschev’s decision to send the tanks into Hungary to stop the fascist uprising?

Given the historical context of the literal genocides the US was facilitating in asia and south america at that time, even if you ignore the literal fascist collaborators hijacking the movement and pretend it was just a bunch of liberals fighting for “freedom”, keeping them from falling within the west’s claws would have been justified.

If your criticism was that the USSR was too heavy handed putting down the fascists, look at what’s happened since.

Truely nobody is as oppressed as straight cis pink brits.

Everything I like is socialist, trains? Socialist. Gardening? Socialist. Cooking a huge meal where someone else does the dishes? That’s socialism.

Car dealership owners are a pretty big lobby, at least 20% of them are making 1.5m/y and tend to be very involved in local politics.

https://eml.berkeley.edu/~yagan/Capitalists.pdf

Liberalism is defined by support of capitalism, the two terms can often be used interchangeably.

You’re looking at anarchism, communism, democratic socialism if you’re opposed to capitalism.

Though experience tells me a lot of the people going “fuck capitalism” just want the capitalists and politicians to be a little less greedy and give some more crumbs to the working class within the imperial core.

Yes, the gazelle can feed your family for a week, the rhino horn can feed them for a year.

people don’t deal with Elon when buying a Tesla, but they do have to deal with shitty dealers when buying another brand.

I’m not gonna defend the state of the dealership system, but from what I hear, getting Teslas fixed is awful in unique ways.

Tesla is going to end up the largest car manufacturer in the world.

They’re the largest by stock price, but in EVs/year they were surpassed by a chinese company a couple years ago, and both traditional and new companies are closing the gap Tesla got from all the early capital that was dumped into them. They never came close if you include non-electric cars.

Other manufacturers cannot make profitable cars at the price point Tesla is offering.

There’s tons of electric cars at the price point Tesla offers, with a fraction of the issues. One thing I did notice is other companies limit what they’re willing to import into the US to avoid competing with more expensive models (eg, no company imports cheap electric convertibles or station wagon because they’d compete with higher-end electric cars and SUVs/pickups respectively), but I’m not aware of any market segment that doesn’t have a competitive non-tesla equivalent.

Awhile ago, someone counted the number of local news stories of people getting immolated by their Teslas. It was more per car sold than the Ford Pinto.

Between:

Sanctions are not collective punishment

Not according to the state department. They themselves say the reason they use sanctions is to cause as much pain to the people as possible so they’re more likely to overthrow the gov’t, or failing that, be softer targets for military intervention.

DPRK did invade the RoK

The RoK was doing genocide and had been recognized as the gov’t of all of Korea in the UN due to the US’s machinations, a gov’t whose election was rigged in the south, and absent in the north. The elections the north arranged were of course, ignored.

The DPRK saw that their position was unsustainable and struck while they still stood a chance. The war started when the people of the DPRK were faced with an existential threat.

Which is kind of similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but nobody here is gonna pretend Russia are the good guys, just that they’re fighting a greater evil.

Also also, China has reserved a spot on its equivalent of the National Mall for when it takes Taiwan back.

Do you think the RoC can feasibly remain independent forever?

Eventually either PRC is gonna be able to make them a better deal than what the failing American empire can, or they’ll make long-term peaceful integration infeasible, necessitating short-term, violent integration.

And have NATO 500 miles from Moscow and all of Russia’s industry? That would be suicidal, Everyone remembers Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya.

Also the reason the west is extending the war is because they too want land and resources. This is a war between two bourgeois dictatorships