>The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is urging New York City residents to exercise caution when purchasing cars online, as they have recently identified a surge in the sale of stolen vehicles.
>As of Oct. 15 (2024), the DMV reports that it has recovered 228 stolen vehicles amounting to a value of $6.35 million. Of the 228 vehicles recovered this year, 149 were purchased by an unsuspecting victim after seeing a post on Facebook Marketplace or a similar site.
That is 65% of recovered stolen vehicles in New York was sold through online marked places.
"From 1997 through 2022,
reported thefts decreased 67 percent. In 2022, however, there was a dramatic increase in vehicles
reported stolen: 26,653, representing a 112 percent increase from the 12,573 reported stolen in 2019."
US provides credible deterrence because the US can more or less take on all NATO adversaries at the same time, while Europe alone cannot really take on even one NATO adversary on its own. US also shown willingness to use forc, which European nations have not shown it.
In negotiations with Ukraine, one of the major sticking points is that Ukraine wants security guarantees and peacekeeping forces on the ground, and European nations have themselves said this won't work without a US backstop, which US is not going to provide.
> Russia has said it will not accept any troops from NATO countries being based on Ukrainian soil. And Trump has given no sign the U.S. will guarantee reserve firepower in case of any breaches of a truce. Starmer says the plan won't work without that U.S. "backstop."
If US hasn't provided anything, and Europe is willing to stand on its own, then this would not be the case, there would be no need for a US backstop.
Basically, my theory is this: If Europe didn't need the US, then the US would not have to be involved at all with Ukraine negotiations, and the war would have been stopped years ago. Instead, we have European nations lamenting that the US is not doing more, and that US is not willing to provide security assistence and guaruntees to Ukraine.
I think it should be irrelevant what the US wants to do or does not want to do with Ukraine.
I promise you if Europe kicked Russia out of Ukraine, the threats about Greenland would never have happened. US sees Europe as some child that has overstayed it's welcome at home. This relationship we have with US is not good for us, and if it is good for the US they can't see how. We need to stand on our own feet, we can and should be stronger than the US and Russia combined.
You underestimate how deep anxiety for needles can be. I have a friend that has gotten regular injections for years and it still happens that he faints from it.
When people talk about a "non profit" entity, they are almost certainly referring to a legal non-profit. Maybe that's not what GP meant.
And yes, you are technically correct in that there's no way to know that they are or are not pulling in money and pocketing it. I'm not sure how that's relevant to the questions asked but okay.
There is. Without a legal framework its just an association that claims not to make a profit. This is all word games though as be clearly don't agree on the definition of a non-profit organization.
In UK there is simply no such status as "non-profit", so technically none of what you listed are "non-profit" organizations. These are unincorporated associations, that, by the way, can be making profit (but that would be on shaky grounds, since common law makes it hard not to fuck up, being as vague as it always is). However, there is a "charity" status in UK, and you'd have be a registered organization to obtain it.
Anyway, "non-profit" is (i.e. "only makes sense defined as...") a legal status, it isn't just a way to say "not making money" (after all, we wouldn't call any failing business a non-profit, right?), so it really doesn't make any sense to ask if an illegal underground gang is "non-profit". GP is correct to point that out.
Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors. Unless we want to return to mercantilism a global empowerment of organized labour globally is the only real way to fix this.
The only reason offshoring is ever done is because leadership does have a vision beyond the next quarter. Offshoring takes years to pay off because of the upfront costs and time it takes to work out how to run the new operation efficiently.
I guess, but the real issue here is that capital will mount a concerted, decades long effort, to prevent global organization of labor. Its not like its per se impossible to get enough global labor organization: its just profoundly, aggressively, even murderously, opposed by people who have power.
I guess we could think of that as just "part of the reality," but I think its a little silly not to at least mention it.
It is not realistic but even worse it isnt even desirable.
There is huge swaths of opposition to "global organization of labor". The last thing you want is to oppress a bunch of people under your vision of perfect government.
Labour is still going to be cheaper in offshore countries simply because of purchasing power parity.
Even good conditions and everything in country like India paying them around 10-30k$ is seriously really really good (source: I live there) and its english speaking and well integrated etc.
I saw another comment which mentioned that just merely healthcare in america can cost around 10k$/year
So Labour should be empowered in a good way but this idea still won't help america simply because of power purchasing parity.
Not to forget that America is going through some really tough economic crisis right now which it needs to figure out on. The deficit is still high and everything and companies are favoured completely capitalistic and so combined with all of these factors, we really come to the situation where it is.
I appreciate your optimism but I have my doubts. Especially when one reads the tense atmosphere of America right now
I think it's hard to overstate how big of a deal "Labour needs to be empowered globally" is.
Think of it as two huge reservoirs of water, one of which is at a higher altitude. If you connect them with a pipe, they will inevitably tend to equalize - this is what is happening with globalization. It's good for the developing world but bad for the developed. The labor class not only needs to demand better working conditions, but also standards of living, environment regulations, housing, etc. etc. until equilibrium is reached. The owner class will be exploiting the difference until that happens.
I doubt that an equilibrium can ever be reached tho.
The biggest issue is that even if one provides better working conditions, but also standards of living, environment regulations, housing, etc. etc
Even then, there would still be an imbalance and equilibrium would still not be reached simply because of power purchasing parity and other factors.
Plus another issue is corruption. There are rules and laws already in place but corruption takes their way
Also another thing but corruption can actually also take regulations and hijack them and actually penalize things simply for reducing competition etc.
Corruptions also the reason why we have enough food to feed the world but corruptions in the way and I am not sure if there is a way to solve it
y'know I have this pet theory that corruption is everywhere but the incentives of corruption/ways changes.
In the UK, the prices of rent are so damn high, this is a developed country.
In America, corruption takes place in the form of lobbying and the coupling of politics and finance and also the immense parity of money between the average person and the CEO salary's ratio being one of the highest and the shrewd incentives being one causing these issues in the first places being written almost in law, CEO's of major companies will fire 10_000's of people or more in a blink of an eye.
China, although secret, In my opinion has corruption inside the country as well from a more political standpoint as well
In India, there are some regulations and systems meant for good but people skirt through them via corruption.
So I don't know but to me corruption feels natural in the sense that altruism can't be the only gene and biology would dictate maliciousness to be present
This does make me sad thinking about it but I think that the nash equilibrium is unfair. This is how the system works, this is a cycle and Countries Like India/China once were super rich then became poor then are getting on their path again
At the end of the day, the person speaking about this Jensuan huang is corrupt as well selling AI hype in the first place, spiking actual prices of actual goods people buy thus contributing in inflation but also that some people accuse them of even writing this statement as a way to people please
When I had thought about it previously, I think um the best things we can do is probably reduce the incentives of corruption and then the nature of good ideas would take prevalance.
It's also just not a developing vs developed countries thing anymore as I said. We see in the news cycle how much blatantly corrupt America's current administration is becoming.
At the end of the day, facing reality is hard but that's the only way we can really put real change in the world.
if you have some thoughts about how to counter corruption in your idea/ actually creating incentives to be good and not corrupt or even malicious compliance in your idea and I am listening and I'd love to discuss more about it.
I wish there was less corruption but I am starting to think that incentives are set this way to help corruption and those themselves might've been/were brought by corruption themselves as one wrote on HN once that corruption brings more corruption , so how can one stop this vicious cycle? Because if that happens, I am telling you that America has enough money but the corrupt forces distribute them in a concentrated manner, even solving that problem to me feels like something which can help empower the labour globally
perhaps the rich can be taxed for what they deserve and that money can then be spent in developing countries labour class in your idea? This to me feels the most okay way to help but the problem is, nobody's taxing the rich/its hard because of all the loopholes/malicious legal compliance in many places.
> Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors.
Or it's a great way to spur innovation in automation, which has other beneficial downstream effects. This is what people always seem to forget to consider, and I don't know why.
That's like rich people threatening to leave if taxes are raised. It's always a bluff.
And, the cheapest labor is slave labor like Dubai and the US (via prison labor in current use by multiple major corporations) use already. If there's no floor of standards, that creates perverse incentives and ridiculous instability.
> Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors
This is is a fallacious argument. Most or even all of those places couldn't have hoped to out-compete the domestic companies without the traitorous companies shipping complete factories to them. The reason the Soviets didn't outcompete us wasn't down to just incentive structures (though that was part of it), quite alot of their failure was down to being locked out of the market on machine tools.
Basically, A company is bound by legal precendence to focus on capitalistic gains. It would be better if we argue the existence of other structures/their prevalence but I don't think that we can blame the entire companies but the darn structures that they are in
A CEO makes 100x (yes its not becoming hyperbole, sad reality) than workers. He is given power and he is given incentives to cut money wherever he can. He sees off sourcing and does this.
But I am not seeing America go towards a path like this, on the contrary, we are seeing America try to actively talk about workers in here and then talk about businesses without doing anything about all the issues in the first place.
There is a fundamental conflict of interests and America's promising both sides. It honestly feels political to me now because the news cycle for America is moving so damn fast (which is really really bad) that nobody comes to question these things in the first place or most aren't because they aren't literally having the time to do such with all the news cycle imo
I don't really know what America can do at this point.
> This is is a fallacious argument. Most or even all of those places couldn't have hoped to out-compete the domestic companies without the traitorous companies shipping complete factories to them. The reason the Soviets didn't outcompete us wasn't down to just incentive structures (though that was part of it), quite alot of their failure was down to being locked out of the market on machine tools.
Do you have any sources for this, I found it quite fascinating that machine tools can play such a big impact.
If it is, is it a sort of chicken and egg problem where machine tools require factories themselves which again require machine tools. If so, why couldn't Soviet Union just import some from other countries to bootstrap the production of tools which could then bootstrap all factories?
This just comes down to their incompetence. They were communists so they refused to just let thousands of domestic companies start up to produce the machine tools domestically to solve their problem. China did.
No not at all. Embedded in sediment would preserve them better.
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