To a massive degree, that is exactly correct. The US is doing the rest of the world a HUGE favor by making room for them.

Since WWII, the US Navy has enforced open navigation of the seas - free trade for all in effect. This has allowed any and all "new world powers" to exist, grow, and have influence. As you say, "They're coming, like it or not". Well, if the US does not "like it" they have a very simple counter.

If the US were to ever withdraw the Navy and no longer patrol the seas of the world, the entire world economy would collapse - large scale trade could no longer happen over oceans. No other nation in the world is able to step in and protect all of their shipping.

Trade would still happen overland, but that is way more expensive than by ship. Most nations would collapse, chaos ensue, and waves of barbarism that would make the Middle Ages look like a backyard BBQ.

And before anyone chimes in - no, China cannot do it. They do have more ships than the US Navy, but cannot project power. They have never been and never will be a Naval Power, and cannot protect all of their shipping around the globe. On top of that, no one on Earth would think that China would ever equally protect everyone's shipping.

So, yeah, accommodation about covers it.

I don't think so - nobody hires fresh-outs for $150,00-$200,00.

Unless this is all a sham for hiring the fresh-out children of those whose loyalty needs to be purchased, at pretty inflated rates.

Then further pressuring the private-sector companies to voluntarily "contribute" to this loyalty program after the 2 years is up by hiring the now available "engineers".

All of which seems to be right around the time of the next presidential election. Imagine that.

Absolutely! The Federal Consumer Protection Burrough will protect us customers ^h^h^h^h^h consumers. I'll just call them up.... Hey, what d you mean "This number has been disconnected"?

Residential rooftop solar is not, and cannot ever be, the most economical way to generate electricity. But why does it have to be? Seems like it's a point, but also a non-sequitur. Rooftop solar only needs to have a positive ROI to make sense. Does not need to be the most economical.

Is your car / truck the MOST economical way to get around? Probably not. Mine isn't. And that's OK. Works for me, right now.

I suspect this as well. I would not touch blockchains for stocks with a 10' pole. I think it is just another way to disconnect the stocks from actual stock certificates.

Consider - for years now the SEC has allowed brokers to get away from reality with shorting stocks. Many times I have seen aggregate short volume that exceeds the *entire existing number of shares*. That used to be impossible.

Originally, the brokers had to literally track down someone who owned shares and agreed to "rent them out" for a short seller to sell on the market and perform a short sell.

Now? The brokers just act like bookies, take the 'bet' from the short seller, and "we'll settle it all up in a few days or so".

This tokenizing is ultimately just another way to *tell* people they have shares in a company. Supposedly it is backed by actual shares, until we find out one day it was all spent on hookers and blow. Regulations and safeguards have been stripped away every year - it's getting back to a wild west mentality - no one is keeping everyone honest. Same people who idolize the characters from "The Wolf of Wall Street" are behind all this. I will stay far away.

I imagine the installment payment companies pay Temu, or whoever, 90% (so at a discount) and collect the whole price from the customer over time. Similar to the merchant paying a CC fee (they get less there too). Klarna or whoever market it as making big sales more likely for the merchant, so they make the discounts up in volume?

Proof positive we elected an idiot. Smart play is to ban drilling, shut down all oil production, and sit on our reserves. Let the rest of the world drain all its oil supplies, in competition with each other. THEN, when everyone else is tapped out, OWN the worlds petroleum markets as a monopoly.

Logistics mark ups as in it costs you $4.37 to ship out and you charged the customer $7.99 for shipping? I could see that being a revenue stream.

A free toy that was popular for a summer and a financial product held by major investment firms (in single digit percentages mostly, just so they may not be left behind in case something good happens) have one thing in common - both have ZERO intrinsic value. They may both be "up" at some point in time, but there is nothing keeping them up but shared belief.

Who keeps filling Slashdot up with this nunsense??

Exactly. Ever wonder why the US put a massive nation laboratory in ... Idaho??

Ire aside, Mr. AC kindof proved my point for me. He went in with a chainsaw and got a working Twitter with 80% less staff. Twitter is, after all, just a website in the end - what do you need a huge amount of staff for?

In any case, Musk had the assumption, that most people have, that there must be huge amounts of Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in government - because, well, because everyone just believes that. Without evidence. Which led directly to his wild claims about how much money he could save.

But in the end - and not for a lack of trying! - he couldn't come up with more than a pittance. And most of that highly contested.

I stand by my conclusion. Thank you AC for helping me prove it! I forgot about his gutting Twitter. Which is still functioning today, BTW.

Funny you should bring up DOGE. Musk, love him or hate him, you have to admit is effective. Moves fast and breaks things. Gets. Stuff. Done. Turned loose with a chainsaw (literally) to find and root out government fraud, waste, and abuse. With a team of unpaid (??) minions and unfettered access to quite literally everything, he spent weeks on end tearing everything apart to find inefficiencies.

And published his results. Many of which are debatable, a few maybe outright fabrication, some legit. BUT - giving him the benefit of the doubt - taking EVERY SINGLE PENNY of savings he claimed as true. In full. All of it. Given all that, it amounts to less than 1% of the government expenditures.

He singlehandedly proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the US government is AT LEAST 99% free of Fraud. 99%+ free of Waste. 99%+ free of abuse.

All I can say to that is... Thank you sir!

OK. They *were* encoded into the ledger - and now show as burned. Those 300T were absolutely NOT tied to any assets. Say someone - oh how about George Soros - buys 100 million in this stablecoin. What's to prevent the company that owns the ledger from being pressured or *ordered* by, oh, say, the Government, to "burn" George's coins. Only his. Poof! 100M gone.

Until they are regulated as strictly as a bank - or more strictly - and have legal options to push back against something like the above - I wouldn't trust them with a single dollar. Ever.

Yeah I called BS when I first read this too. Then, thinking about it some more I went to fetch my 1:1000 topological map of the pacific basin with all the underwater telecommunications cable routes overlaid..... Dang it! I *hate* when I misplace that thing.

Anyway, it is *possible* that 95% of the international traffic crossing the pacific runs through that on cable - assuming it has the bandwidth capacity for that - as the shortest hop across the pacific. Without it all that traffic is now routed around the edges of the pacific, or high over it (via satellite) instead. Perhaps with significant network delays.