> Is the problem inequality or rather poverty? Because those are not the same thing.
According to the OP, inequality: "Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement."
> What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.
Are you talking about manned Moon missions or unmanned Earth-orbiting satellites? To use your own words, those are not the same thing.
In any case, poverty is a policy decision, a refusal to redistribute the wealth.
This is a policy decision insofar as the policy isn’t to liquidate entire groups of people over class and status resentment. “Just redistribute the wealth bro, it’ll work this time bro I swear let’s just do a redistribution”.
I think that helping the less fortunate is cool, and launching people to the Moon is lighting money on fire for utopian and inevitably corrupt money transfer schemes.
> Is hardly the same as objecting to activities that distress pretty much all animals in the vicinity long term.
A big thing which distresses pretty much all animals in the vicinity is "shipping".
One other specific animal harm that wind farm get blamed for is bird deaths. Know what is responsible for more bird deaths? Skyscrapers.
The only way to not harm the environment (with current science) is a choice which is unsustainable, because the choice requires everyone everywhere to not only agree now but forever, and "forever" is really hard because anyone defecting from "degrowth" is necessarily stronger for that defection.
So yes, objecting to wind turbines on these grounds is absolutely concern trolling.
Oil is (close to) fungible, which means the higher prices in US fuel pumps are just as much financially supporting dictators in Tehran and Moscow as EU fuel pumps.
Ironically, the "close to" part is just enough to prevent the USA from isolating itself from the world market by refining and using what it currently exports.
Pretty sure the US does not buy energy from natural gas pipelines to Russia, neither are we shutting down all of our Nuclear Power Plants (like Germany) because it's green to import more gas ?
As an American I couldn't tell you what their logic is exactly.
The planned graph is an almost straight line from 2005 to 2050, which it is following very closely in the best of German stereotypes.
A decade or so ago, this was described as:
while the German approach is not unique worldwide, the speed and scope of the Energiewende are exceptional
While they could've done better in a magical alternate universe where the population was not terrified of nuclear power, the transition has in fact been very fast.
We did. Most of the oil and gas there has now been removed and sold. Oil production peaked in 1999, gas in 2001.
If the same place, the North Sea specifically, was filled with wind farms, it could supply about half of the EU's electricity.
(If all the waters around the British Isles had wind farms, it becomes 140% of current EU total primary energy consumption or 660% of the electricity consumption, assuming I did the substitution efficiency multiplier right).
Israel's not even close to being the biggest threat for the way of living in Europe.
This is because Israel's neighbours who they are attacking aren't in Europe, and also there's a lot of tourists in Europe that Israel would like to be visiting them, but the point isn't why, it's just that Israel are not themselves a threat to Europe.
USA's probably number 2 threat after Russia. But neither Israel's nor the USA's belligerence regarding Iran seems to be so much as painting a target on European backs this time around. Which may be because Iran noticed the USA threatening Europe, IDK.
- Israel foments conflicts and urges/pressurizes the US to fight them out on its behalf - already confirmed by General Wesley Clark who talked about the Seven Nation Plan.
- Refugees flee those conflicts and move to the closest nations providing asylum en masse - Turkey and then the EU.
- Israeli and other Jewish NGOs facilitate refugee migrations to Europe in the name of humanitarianism.
The US at least helps/used to help protect Europe via NATO. Israel doesn't.
> Iran doesn’t have the resources to deny access to the entire Indian Ocean.
I have what may be a scale issue in my imagination, so bear with me if this is silly.
There are reports of international drug transport via seaborne drones in the 0.5-5 tonne range, and of these crossing the Pacific, and the cost of the vehicles is estimated to be around 2-4 million USD each. If drug dealers can do that, surely Iran (and basically everyone with a GDP at least the size of something like Andorra's) should be able to make credible threats to disrupt approximately as much non-military shipping as they want to worldwide?
> if drug dealers can do that, surely Iran (and basically everyone with a GDP at least the size of something like Andorra's) should be able to make credible threats to disrupt approximately as much non-military shipping as they want to worldwide?
Sure. Do you think that means worldwide shipping would shut down?
And the point isn't to take the risk to zero. But to a level where military escorts can feel safe.
> Do you think that means worldwide shipping would shut down?
I think there's a danger of that, at least if countermeasures are not easily available for normal shipping.
Even 1-on-1 rather than 1-v-everyone, there's too many players (not all of them nations) with too many conflicting goals and interests. If Cuba tried to do it, could they credibly threaten to sink all sea-based trade involving the USA? If not Cuba, who would be the smallest nation that could?
And the same applies to Taiwan and China, in both directions, either of which would be fairly dramatic on the world stage, even though China also has land options. Or North Korea putting up an effective anti-shipping blockade against Japan.
> But to a level where military escorts can feel safe.
Are there enough military ships to do the escorting?
> the US and Europe would be pretty fucked since we depend on it much more.
China could still get resources from russia and is much more self sustained
America would be fine. We have the Americas and Asia to trade with, and Iran can’t restrict those oceans in any meaningful way.
Europe, the Middle East, Africa and non-China Asia would get screwed.
One of the contracting things I turned down was someone who knew what they wanted to do was make Uber for aircraft.
I turned it down because they clearly didn't know enough about this goal to fill an elevator pitch, let alone a slide deck, and I think many of the current US Secretary of XYZ leaders are similarly unaware of how vast a chasm lay between what they wanted to do and a specific, measurable, realistic, and time-constrained plan to actually achieve anything.
Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?
To the extent it's a money making scheme, well, capitalism gets blamed for all money making schemes even if it's supposed to be a specific subset of them which is useful for the feedback one can get from open markets.
(As that's a caveat inside a caveat, I'm mostly agreeing with you).
It's all of those, yet none are the real root reason.
For that, you must look at the main beneficiary. Which country stands to gain the most from a completely dilapidated Iran? Which country stands to gain more when all the regional powers that could stand up to it have been destroyed?
> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?
Or because America is filled with demented cultists who think a two thousand year old property dispute is the key to triggering the Apocalypse so they can all be whisked away to paradise.
It's not a 2,000 year old dispute. Zionism began in around 1900. It was spearheaded until recently by "secular" Jews, who were borderline atheist. The Jewish religious texts themselves make wishing for a "return to Zion and Jerusalem" sound like wishing for a utopia or world peace. It pretty much reads like a metaphor, not like a political programme. Finally, most highly devout Jews were strongly opposed to Zionism, at least until after WW2.
That comment accurately described what American evangelicals believe.
American evangelicals don't care about 1900, differences between secular and religious Jews or their disputes. They don't care at all. They actually agree with a lot of what loosing side of WWII said and thought. And they in fact do believe the end of times prophecy and their duty to speed it up.
If you are unaware of that, maybe you should not be so arrogant when comment on politics. Because the radical American religious leaders are literally talking to the troops now as minister of war is their disciple.
There's something darkly funny about the reality being so demented that just describing it on HN gathers downvotes because it objectively sounds so awful.
The really crazy thing is just how few death cultists it really takes. The smallest minority of them have been busy radicalizing teenagers and biding their time for the past 20 years and this is what it’s come to.
It's so bizarre how OP was downvoted. It's a truth. History repeats itself. It's not the first war. It's not the last war. Maybe his (or her) tirade on capitalism annoyed the HN downvoting shoggoth.
> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?
I don’t think we should look too far for reasons. He got all excited with the adventure in Venezuela and wanted to do it again, but with bombs and his pal Bibi. He’s itching to do the same thing to Cuba, and he’s not subtle about it.
> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?
We won't know until everyone publishes their memoirs. I imagine absurd reasoning is entirely on the table. Given the administration's blind luck with its raid on Venezuela it assumed that scaling up the same plan would function, without realising how fortunate it was the first time. Reminiscient of Blair and Kosovo leading to hubris on Iraq.
I think they were extremely fortunate that their complex plan actually went off without a hitch. Its quite a lot of moving parts and hoping that certain people will react in certain ways.
> Maybe US also had people on the inside in Iran, but killed them by accident on the first strike with the "precision bombings".
Yeah but no. Iran isn't Venezuela by a long shot, extremely different properties all round. Its hubris to think what worked out well in one case would apply to a completely different one on the other side of the world.
What we've done in space has absolutely helped with poverty. It makes weather forecasts possible, which helps even the poorest farmers.
This can happen at the same time a handful of people become obscenely wealthy from it.
Though in Musk's case, I suspect the wealth is a bubble which will pop before he can cash out more than 8% of it.
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