Comments by "" (@timogul) on "PolyMatter" channel.

@ASS_ault A lot of people hate vegetables, but adults eat them anyway. Because they are adults.
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TL;DR, "Haiti has never been capable of fixing their own problems, but also can't be fixed by outsiders."
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The thing to remember is that not only does Japan have a fraction of the arable land of the US, but also that land is far less contiguous. It's not just wide open plains (or forests that can be turned into plains), a lot of it's tiny plots of land carved out of mountainsides, layers of 1/4 and 1/2 acres each that you can't reasonably "scale up." They could become sightly more efficient, but they could never come close to feeding themselves.
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By lying.
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The US has no legal obligation to defend Taiwan. It does have a sacred duty to defend them, in the sense that with great power must come great responsibility, and if the US is going to become so powerful, then we DO have a duty of care to defend the weak from bullies.
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@tjnak Yup, and consumers benefit from all tax, so it's a virtuous cycle. The important part is to ensure that corporations do not pocket more than they need.
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US House Republicans "Can we get in on that?"
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All high demand concert tickets should be locked to a cell phone number or something, so that they can't be transferred to a different customer. This should prevent scalping over night.
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@F4URGranted Lawmakers probably have to buy tickets for kids and grandkids. Still, a law like that is a pretty specific interference in commerce, and lawmarkers mostly avoid doing something so direct unless there's actual harm (more than just inconvenience and people paying a bit more than they'd like). I wouldn't so much mind if they did get involved, I just don't see it as likely.
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@batmangovno Lol, "race riots." You need to find better news sources.
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@batmangovno Lol, like I said, you really need to find better news sources. Yes, there were white nationalists trying to disrupt the peaceful protests and make them appear to be more dangerous than they were, but of those very few that died, a lot of it was white on white, it wasn't a racial thing. In terms of economics, what damage was caused was a tiny fraction of what covid did to the economy. Someone is trying to sell you crisis to make you panicky and more likely to run to them for support. Ask yourself why they want you so weak and sheep-like.
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@calvinhoward3808 Those weren't "race riots," they were protests against police violence. There is a difference. The only "race riot" in recent memory was in DC on Jan 6th.
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@ Maybe, but it's a tricky balance, because while it might be possible to supply 100% of the country's food needs this way, it would end up being many times more expensive than simply importing the food, and typically there is just no point to that. It makes more sense to build resilient, flexible supply lines and emergency stockpiles than it does to try and force a local industry where it does not make sense.
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@maddiekits It's more efficient IF you can produce the food efficiently, but it's typically much less efficient in practice. I don't know the specifics of how the Netherlands does things, but I imagine they still import a lot of things from places.
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@royalroyal2210 I don't believe Putin has ever said that, but it would be funny, yeah.
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@d716agq This is why someone in the industry needs to set up a competitor that competes on "ethics," and then everyone bullies their favorite artist into using them.
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@maddiekits In certain applications, I'm sure it is, but one of their primary exports is ornamental plants, dairy, and meat. Food crops make up less than !/5th of their exports. Also, half of their exports are processed products, ie food purchased from other countries, processed in some way (such as turning milk into cheese, or taking fruits off of a boat and putting it on a train), and then sent back out. The Netherlands is also 4th in the world for food imports, which puts it ahead of Japan in that.
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@jessh4016 In what way is anyone's "foot on their head?" The US has been pouring resources into the country as best we can. The only interference we've made has been when anti-American forces took over, which would not be in anyone's interest.
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I do think you underestimate the growth of automation here. IF automation grows fast enough, and IF the Chinese government take best advantage of it, that could offset the more traditional problems of decreasing population. I have a feeling that if China's economy does collapse, it will only be because they were unlucky enough to be only a couple of decades too early for the automation singularity to eliminate that problem entirely.
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So basically, they are following "The Trump Doctrine?"
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Spotify just needs to play hardball with both customers and record companies. Make clear that the current model is not sustainable, and that it would be WAY too much effort for any competitor to duplicate what Spotify already has, only to fail itself, so everyone just has to agree with some major changes if they want to maintain anything like what they are currently getting. Basically, flip the table. The model that they need to shift to is to do away with "unlimited streaming of all music" entirely, as well as massive blanket payments to music labels. Instead, while you would be able to listen to any random song a few times without limitation, enough to get a taste of it or to satisfy a curiosity, if you liked it enough that you'd want to listen to it dozens of times, you'll need to pay some sort of fee somewhere. This might be paying a standard purchase price to own that one song forever, or it might be to purchase a plan that allows you to stream any songs by that artists, or it might be a plan that allows you to stream any songs of that genre, or by a particular record label, etc., and then record labels would get a cut of any packages that they are a part of, relative to the value users place on their content (ie, if there is a "pop music" package, and one record label's content is played twice as much as another's, then they would get twice the cut for each person who owns that package).
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@GenocideWesterners My tax money will pay for missiles that will die for Taiwan. This will largely be an air and sea battle, and china doesn't have anything that can get within striking distance of a US asset.
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I still use a 20 year old version of Photoshop. It still works on Windows 10. It has a few minor glitches here and there, but I've learned to work around those.
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@ASS_ault I spent most of my young life traveling the world. Why do you ask?
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@ASS_ault What would other countries have to do with wearing masks? Masks are effective regardless of which country you're in. In Japan, they often wear masks just for flu season.
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@cancanjaker1620 There are currently several major countries with higher debt to GDP ratios than the US but that seem to be relatively stable. One of these is Japan, who couldn't pose a military threat to Guatemala.
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Synonyms are fun.
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@roscojenkins7451 I think you're talking homonyms. Or slant homonyms, at least.
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@roscojenkins7451 That would be a non-sequitur.
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Why not just shift their economy over to a pure USD system? Just separate the oil sector from all other portions of the economy, so that most people's day to day activities take place as if they just lived in a normal country without any oil, aside from that they have low taxes because all the government projects and vital entitlement programs are state funded?
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@novinceinhosic3531 I don't think that's necessarily the case. You just run 99% of the government and economy exactly as if the country had no oil, just run it normally and let it be as successful or unsuccessful as though the oil never existed. But then, layer on top of that that the oil is being produced and processed and sold, and that money is handled in a completely separate currency, and is gifted back to the public in terms of public investment and services. It would essentially be like a country without oil that is receiving a large amount of "foreign aid" from a friendly external country. I'm not sure whether it would make more sense for the oil or the regular economy to run on USD, or maybe even both, but clearly the current strategy isn't working.
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TL;DW: For tax purposes.
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