Regarding UBI: You cant get there from here.

My future prediction is there will be resource wars given that one nation feels the need to be first before everyone else.

That only leads to one outcome: A significant reduction in human population on the planet.

After the resource wars, if there is a small contingent of humans left, maybe then there will be UBI (If we can manage the warlords)

I'm afraid it has to be all torn down to the ground before UBI can even be considered.

Sort of like a false vacuum in a universe, except there are an infinite number of metastable states; each one shittier than the one which proceeded it.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFalse_vacuum

You see this pattern everywhere in contracting markets. I've always thought of it (From the PoV of company leadership) : "We must circle the wagons to protect ourselves against the customer who has too many choices."

So, all these companies coalesce like the large black hole at the end of a universe which collapses in on itself. What is left of value in this situation? You have a collection of companies which didn't innovate out of the contracting market and/or refused to do so, and now they have dubious value to investors. The only thing left of value is the brand name and their reputation which was once great.

Think of the companies buying up these brand names as collectors of goodwill? No, I don't think so. They probably just want the name to fool consumers into buying something from them. Look at all the things branded "Polaroid" which weren't instant cameras.

Question: Goods sourced from local sellers? How would that be competitive with everyone else based in the United States?

The only way I can see this working is if they import in bulk in huge quantities to get economy of scale, break down the palettes or shipping containers and then distribute to individual customers in the US. Even this would be labor intensive. If they try this, they probably will do in in a southern state where the there are no state minimum wage laws. They could pay as little as the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for these warehouse jobs. (If they can find workers willing to work for such a pittance.)

I suppose they could also bulk ship to Mexico, but that runs the risk of Mexico getting hit with higher tariff rates and maybe also face the elimination of de-minimis for them.

This along with the ever rising costs to acquire, maintain, and insure cars will drive the middle class out being able to afford a car.

I believe it is going to happen gradually over the next 10-15 years starting with the lower middle class, and progressing to the middle class.

Will we be become like India/Indonesia/Vietnam with tons of electric bikes, scooters and motorcycles?

Will the republicans require electric bikes to be registered like motorcycles so they can be taxed for having an electric motor?

But you'll still be subject to income taxes

They say it will reduce friction, but it will really just insulate you from the details of why a purchase won't be in your best interests. Anybody remember some of the travel/hotel booking companies in the 90's? They did the same thing. Certain details didn't come to light until after a purchase was made.

My first rule of buying products and services. NEVER accept offers to buy something from anyone who pitches something to you. Always seek out what you want to buy, and only then after making an assessment of its cost-effectiveness, make the purchase. You want to be able to compare several offers just to see if you're being charged a fair price for a product or service. Accepting an offer from only one source destroys all that as you are wearing blinders and don't see the pricing signals the rest of the market is offering.

Will be caused be rock weathering due to an increase in the sun's luminosity approximately 1 billion years from now.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.space.com%2Fbillion-years-from-now-oxygen-lack-wipes-out-life-on-earth

"As our Sun ages, it is becoming more luminous, meaning that in the future Earth will receive more solar energy. This increased energy will affect the surface of the planet, speeding up the weathering of silicate rocks such as basalt and granite. When these rocks weather the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is pulled out of the atmosphere and through chemical reactions locked in carbonate minerals. In theory, the Earth should start to cool down as carbon dioxide levels fall, but in around 2 billion years this effect will be negated by the ever-harshening glare of the Sun."

So the CO2 gets sequestered, the plants die, and then the animals then eventually die due to lack of oxygen.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fhtml%2F2501.06623v1

Puts all those nuclear weapons to good use, albeit with the risk of poisoning the planet with radiation.

This is not just limited to Intel. It has happened at countless other large tech companies as well. It used to be that people were given more latitude when pursuing the company goals, but now, its more like you are placed on a set of railroad tracks where no deviation is tolerated. You are essentially told what to do, how to do it, when it is due, and you have to do it according to rigid processes. You are always told to "follow the process".

When this happens you don't get groundbreaking inventions anymore. The only thing which matters are short term goals in order to meet investor expectations for revenue and profit. In other words pure short sitedness.

It used to be that there was some sort of balance between management, shareholders, customers, and employees. Now, the balance is lopsided. Management comes first, then the shareholders, then the customers, and then finally the employees. This is the flaw with C-corporations and the mentality which came to be in the 1980s with salt-water (Chicago school) economics.

It also used to be that there were organizations embedded in large tech companies which did a lot of "blue sky" work which involved long term efforts to come up with the next great thing. Bell Labs was one such entity embedded in AT&T. The shareholders won't justify this kind of "cost center" any more. Even the drug companies don't do much original research. They just buy patent rights from research that leading universities have done, then expend effort to productize it.

When everything becomes so rigid and tightly controlled I can see why some people would leave. Some people cannot function in such an environment.

I do this, but I'm afraid it won't last forever. Eventually Google might win over the ad-blockers because of their immense resources. Enjoy it while you can. They will do everything in their power to maximize profits (Even at the expense of content quality and the invasion of personal privacy).

Here's some of what might eventually happen:

1. Google could start embedding ads directly into the streaming content (At great processing expense). You'd need a specialized AI plug-in to download and then filter out the ads. The viewing would no longer be in real time.

2. They could do a power grab on videos with sponsored content which would result in two things. Content creators would no longer be able to insert sponsored content without giving google a serious cut of the revenue from the sponsoring entity, and the sponsored content would become un-skippable. Again, you would need an AI and database web browser plug in to view videos ad-free and they would not be in real time.

3. The could go Netflix and require everyone to log in to view videos. This last one is the one I really fear for multiple reasons. First, anything you watch on Youtube would no longer be anonymous, and second, the legality of the end user modifying anything which is behind a login can be a legal minefield.

The regime says the walls are to prevent illegal immigrants and drugs from coming in to the country.

But let's pose a hypothetical scenario: The regime's endgame is to lower the standard of living in the United States to match that of 3rd world countries in Africa.
This may be the only way tou would stand a chance of bringing manufacturing back to the United States. They'll accomplish this by crashing the markets and plunging us into economic collapse. They will then have a crisis to put to good use to pass the laws they want as outlined in project 2025.

A border wall would then serve an entirely different purpose:

To keep Americans in.

Watch what happens once the border wall with Mexico is completed. Once they start construction on the Canadian border wall, that's your last chance to leave.

It used to mean soldiers going house-to-house in a city and searching every house for what they were looking for (Sometimes they didn't even know what they were looking for).

Nowadays they just hook up a hoovering device to a data stream and filter for things which interest them. Since a lot of data on cell sites is related to living a life, this is essentially the equivalent to going house-to-house in a blanket search warrant. (Without ransacking each and every house).

Search warrants usually have to state what they are looking for, the parties they are executing the warrant on, and the physical addreses to be searched.

*.* searches should never be allowed. (First asterisk is the party, second asterisk is what they are looking for) regardless of whether its a physical or computer address.

Of course, we'll have to see if the 4th amendment still stays relevant. If the the supreme court justices are jailed, all bets are off).

Maybe not ink, but the firmware could enforce periodic hard drive replacement. I could pop up an error based on uptime saying something like:

Hard drive number AE35 [Apologies to Arthur C. Clarke] is reaching its end of life. Your system will operate in a degraded state if this hard drive isn't replaced within 30 days. Only genuine hard drives from XXX will be accepted into this network attached storage system. Installing a non-XXX branded hard drive will result in the system continuing to operate in a degraded state until an XXX-branded hard drive is purchased and installed.

The razor and blade business model has morphed into something which now looks more like the inkjet printer and printer cartridge, or the John Deere payload files required when you replace a part.

Some form of boxed warning:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBoxed_warning

needs to be in the marketing materials and on the boxes of these types of products so customers can make informed decisions up front when they're about to purchase products with technological vendor lock-in requirements.

Regrettably, I don't see this happening in the United States (due to an entrenched business lobby, among other things) , but it could happen in the EU if it gets bad enough.