Ahh, so your answer is "I don't want to live in a hellhole, but it doesn't serve my purposes to tell anyone that." Got it.

As most of your views come across as far Left and China is a Communist country (just ask them), why stay in a western country? You clearly sympathize and come across as an apologist. Why not move there if they have it all figured out ? North Korea is also a Communist state (just ask them). That also seems like another sunny Communist destination. What's stopping you?

Communism isn't democratic (ie.. with the masses/ThePeople in charge). They have politburos and committees (Soviets) made up of the most stridently communist elites. Any voting is purely pro-forma ceremony. In Democracy we allow the rich folks to use the media to control elections. They do so by getting hordes of folks to vote for material promises and produce wedge issues that pushes them into partisan behavior. Once that happens, it's very easy to control the outcomes of government. Freedom is generally the last thing a government wants to actually give you.

Incidentally, Communists and Marxists only viewed elections as a good thing if it resulted in the workers taking over. Lenin himself mocked the Second International view that the proletariat must first win a majority by universal suffrage, then take power, then organize socialism. He said that is “the height of stupidity or hypocrisy”: it substitutes elections under the old power for class struggle and revolution. The proletariat must first seize state power, then use that power to win the majority of working people. So, basically, after the Communists take over, everyone who sees how great things are will automatically want to vote for them. Let's just briefly acknowledge: it's never worked out like that and definitely didn't for Lenin, either.

Was the government working for the people when it built over 3000 nuclear warheads? Did the people really need those? Did the people need the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, especially those experimented on and their families? Did those used by Project MKUltra or the soldiers who went to war and ran the burn pits or got injected with harmful Anthrax vaccines? Did the people need those middle east forever wars or a new F35s or aircraft carriers to bomb foreigners? Did the people need a currency that is constantly hollowing out and losing value so poor people get fucked by inflation and have a harder time saving money? Is a captured FDA or EPA helping the people or the corporations who captured them? Take a poll of the people and ask them when the last time they felt helped out by the Pentagon was. Do you think if you asked the American electorate would they say they feel well represented or poorly represented by their elected officials?

The current crop of governments we have frankly just suck. I also notice that in none of your last two posts you ever mention individual freedom. As with most of your posts, you seem chiefly concerned with what could be done with a bigger and more empowered government. You never seem to stop and think about what the People could or would do if they had more freedom and more of their own money.

Well, okay, posit that most of the more well established "climate change facts" are established. Humans cause warming. Okay, so, let's not argue about that for a second and again, for the sake of discussion, agree that it's true.

What I'd like to know is this: exactly how much authoritarianism are these facts worth? Europe is much "greener" than the USA or China and seem to be suffering economically for their choices to go on an energy starvation diet. No nukes for Germany and no cheap Russian gas plus a hostile trade regime in Brussels importing Chinese cars to hasten layoffs at Volkswagen and friends. So, clearly climate regulation also has a fat non-zero cost to go with it. So, the second question is how much is it worth to change the status quo or prevent it?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know I hate authoritarians and these stridently green folks seem to have the shape of a tyrant figured out well. They've got the "smash the nonbelievers" vibe of a Crusade. They've got a stack of regulations to lower the boom on the poor folks who drive every day while offering them a paltry new-car discount and meanwhile the regs matter less to smug rich folks driving electric cars powered by their Solar roof and feeling superior about it.

My take was always "looks like you guys are probably right" but also that I'm not on board to "smash the poor to save the planet" and it looks like places like Siberia come out as giant winners in Global Warming lottery, too. I'm also not sure how much I'd like to have to pay to support wealthy retirees in coastal areas now angry that the weather isn't as nice as they'd hoped or there is too much flooding.

So, assuming the green folks are right, how much power do they deserve to regulate and smash everyone else?

Anarchy.

Communists and Fascists have very few disagreements and from my perspective look very much alike. Your "ring" is apropos, but the folks here want a partisan shitfight, not a discussion. They want either a reason to bash communists or a way to bash Trump. You've given them neither.

However, it does require some ground rules about how you define political groups. If you visualize a linear scale with "all freedom" on one side (anarchy) and "no freedom" on the other side (tyranny/authoritarianism), then we see most systems now are leaning hard on the "no freedom" side of that scale.

It's interesting to then see the fight about who the authoritarians are (Commies or Fascists?) and who the anarchists belong to (Left or Right?). I'd say anyone with a huge penchant for big government solutions and lots of laws and rules is, by definition, leaning toward the authoritarian side and current citizen experience pretty well proves that how most governments work, right now.

So, folks can try to use trendy terms to sell their ideas, but what matters, really? How much actual freedom do you have (how protected is that freedom?) and how well is your government operating in terms of problems created minus problems solved?

Right now, pretty much everyone gets a failing score. Part of the reason is the language we use almost always triggers partisanship when the majority of the population is, in fact, partisan. Once that happens, debate ends, discussion ends, brains turn off, and everyone goes back to their fossilized positions.

Governments are powerful and growing more authoritarian all the time. My explanation is that there is a lack of leveling technology, like crossbows and firearms were to the rulers of the time. When tech allows, the people like to push "reset" just like they did back then. Problem is, current tech appears to be enabling the authoritarians, not the rebels.

Had to look that up. Apparently the journos have been using that term for over a decade amongst themselves.

Not surprising that the chatbots are giving these guys a run for their money. Not the best look when the nominal humans in the room do things like make up their own twinspeak I have to look up. Instead of, ya know, communicating to the public in clear language for the purpose of informing them.

Impenetrable in-group vocabulary as a form of meat-space model collapse?

Subtract out the drunks and the octogenarians who can't see over the steering wheel and compare again.

We know how to take away these people's car keys. For whatever reasons we just choose not to. Taking away *everyone's* keys would certainly solve the problem, but so would using a grenade to kill a single fly in your kitchen...

“Looting” is a word you use when a company won’t sit still while you regulate, tax, and sue it. Capital leaving is not theft. Theft is taking something that isn’t yours. A firm shopping for a cheaper, friendlier jurisdiction is just doing what every sane buyer does.

The California film “ecology” argument is nostalgia. The cluster existed because of weather, lots, skilled trade that were already in Cali, and a century of sunk infrastructure. It did not stay because the state was uniquely liberal and welcoming (lol!). It is leaving because other places undercut California on cost, permitting, housing, and political risk. FilmLA still shows on-location days well below the five-year average even after Sacramento tripled the tax-credit program. Feature days keep falling. Crew jobs have been shredded for years. That is not a vibe from Nashville. That is the ledger and the facts talking, commie-boy.

“Grandstanding?”. Nah, I stand by it. A 12-state coalition led by California trying to kill a $111 billion merger is not a gentle reminder about antitrust. It is a political weapon. Leaving is how companies behave when the home state treats them as a hostage.

“International talent will never go to the Confederate South” is the same snobbery that has been wrong about Atlanta for twenty years. Georgia built a real production machine with uncapped credits. Talent follows work and after-tax pay, not wellness rankings. Nashville already has a music-industrial complex, scoring stages going in, no state wage income tax, cheaper housing, and a growing production cluster. Hot chicken is not the only thing they ship, but nice cheap shot.

Oak Ridge “doesn’t count because government built it” is a revealing comment about you. You only count innovation when it flatters your Marxist story. The rest of the country is allowed to have labs, studios, and companies without a permission slip from the Bay or Washington.

Nobody promised better movies from a zip-code change. The claim is narrower: California’s cost stack and political theater make it harder to greenlight, finish, and recoup product. If Paramount can spend the same dollar on more shooting days and less legal theater, the product side gets a better shot. If California wants the ecology to stay, stop making the habitat expensive and hostile. Firms do not owe you their headquarters because your grandparents filmed there.

I love how nobody said shit about Trump or Elon then you come along and splatter this partisan diatribe all over the thread. If anyone is letting Trump and Elon run their life: it's you.

You Communists could steal all the money from every billionaire you'd have enough to run the shit-eating government for 1.2 years. That's it (and that's still with a 40 trillion dollar monkey on it's back that confiscatory windfall wouldn't even touch). Then, after that's destroyed the free market and countless industries, what would you and your commie-pals do then? Eat each other? Gulags? What?

Appears you have reading comprehension struggles since both of your questions were answered later in the paragraph. Trying to parse a small enough snippet to make a snarky reply really failed you this time.

Hold your breath and wish really hard, maybe they will stay in California and just get taxed out of existence instead. *shrug*

People can and do get *scary* good at using it to do all sorts of things. But it's still a limited tool compared to a general purpose digital computer.

Mechanical engineers build weapons; civil engineers build targets.

Take it from someone in the business. Aerospace ain't exactly a magnet for peaceniks.