Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Patrick Boyle" channel.

  1. America’s “temporarily embarrased millionaire” libertarians pitch for the same, thinking a competent government can be somehow achieved without public spending or vital reliance on foreign markets.
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  2. Obama is our youngest living president being born in 1961, meaning the age gap between all the other guys could make any one of them his teenage dad
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  3. AED is pegged to USD, so it’s a straightforward way to launder dirty or overvalued currency into one that’s more respectable 💱
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  4. CEO probably had some sketchy sentiments of his own to go ahead using his employer's money without proper formal authorization.
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  5. Also lucky to grow up in the Cold War West, where barriers to obtaining housing and decent entry-level jobs was considerably lower. Automation and globalization has made these economic fundamentals way harder to reach, splitting modern societies into basically tech-related haves vs non-tech have-nots.
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  6. 4:43 The lack of sewers in Dubai is over a decade out of date. Getting piped sewage to everyone was the one megaproject that didn’t stall following the GFC, with a second treatment plant going online in 2011 and the last communities should be hooked up later this year. I’ve yet to see a poop truck in Dubai in all the time I’ve been here. After the Great Downpour of 2024, it sounds like flooding and rainwater capture will be the next grand project they’ll be quietly digging.
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  7. Depends on point of view: expat to the donor country, immigrant to the receiver. Either way still a migrant.
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  8. ​ @VainerCactus0 Mining tailings and fixed power plants are a lot easier to implement and enforce pollution controls on, compared to recalling every vehicle for emissions tests when they're not dumping dioxides straight into the air we breathe.
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  9. Road taxes based on weight make the most sense, as weight is the dominant factor in road wear. EVs are surprisingly dense and so would pay more, but it would likewise discourage oversize SUVs and crew cab pickups, while favoring gridlock-breaking motorbikes.
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  10. If they last on the market long enough to develop a decent after-sales reliability and maintenance record. Which considering Mainland Chinese attitudes toward quality of service will likely grow much slower than they expect.
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  11.  @001-z9e  Ironically may be the opposite: technical specialists with no humanist or artistic education which could differentiate them from each other... or an AI that could do similar for much cheaper.
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  12. ​ @marshalLannes1769 Continued growth and controlled inflation, which reduces all our previous debt loads the longer we sit on it. Macroeconomics don't have the same interests and vulnerabilities as households on the micro level, like how deflation would short-term benefit consumers but on the larger scale is a doom loop that will ultimately devastate us all.
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  13. Ironically anti-immigrant attitudes and policies scare off exactly the migrant workers we need to keep our food affordable, and we end up with more political refugees whose skillsets and motivations are more like the average American.
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  14. Right, public blockchains once decrypted readily transforms evidence from invisible to irrefutable.
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  15. ​ @ole86 Battery pack production could use more scaling up. Right now it's still dominated by China whereas oil refining is widespread globally. Same with the equally important production of chargers.
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  16. Senior benefits is pretty much the biggest set of drains on America's budget. So if young Americans thought we lack usable public-funded support before, what few programs we have will be even more strapped for cash with the surge of Peak Boomers who failed to develop a post-career financial plan.
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  17. Because the value-added from tech is outpacing the fall from everything else. It’s been that way since PCs started replacing typewriters, and it shows in the growing divide between productivity and wages.
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  18. Sucks that plug-in hybrids were produced at niche rates and always sold at near luxury market prices. I would have bought one a long time ago had they been more available and affordable.
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  19. At least until globalization slows down and you find these city-states literally cannot afford to live let alone remain safe without vital cheap imports from abroad.
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  20. A lot less urbanites then were business owners, entirely reliant on big industries for pay. The democratization of self-proprietorship opportunities through the internet and digital banking likely won't make the next one so totally devastating.
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  21. CEO probably had some sketchy sentiments of his own to go ahead using his employer's money without proper formal authorization.
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  22. That advantage doesn’t necessarily last forever though, and switching costs are a real concern depending on how quickly jurisdictions can change policies.
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  23. Especially when the state dictates an artificially low price of electricity, leading to power plants suddenly going offline for "maintenance" when the unregulated price of coal gets too high.
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  24. People must be buying if >$20k is the asking price you keep seeing.
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  25. Not as much as overdrawn existing water rights and NIMBY politics preventing denser car-optional developments.
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  26. Which is why the German economy is in deep trouble with the cutoff of Russian gas and the stalling of exports to China -- they failed use their savings and state loans to set up resilience through alternatives. Remember that macroeconomic policies don't have the same interests or liabilities that retail consumer borrowers face.
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  27. ​ @XXTerminator-ih4yr I owned a Niu electric motorbike. It spent a surprising amount of time in the shop (front wheel dealigning, sticky throttle, quickly worn shocks, etc). I doubt a Chinese cage will be any more impressive.
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  28. You're not wrong. Unlike every other EV manufacturer, Chinese brands overstate their expected range. And then they self-immolate frequently enough that its discussions online are a top item for censorship and punitive actions.
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  29. The Panic of 1837 was supposedly as deep of a downturn as the Great Depression, but mostly limited to America because of Jacksonian pro-cyclical policies, and the resulting deflationary doom spiral wouldn't fully reverse until additional gold started entering the market from newly-admitted California.
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  30. Georgia was too small and too far away, whereas Ukraine is a major agriculture supplier who's on the doorstep to the EU.
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  31. We might not Na-ion batteries in all our cars, but its production for static applications (buildings and camps) and already-heavy movers (ships and trains) would free up capacity for EVs.
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  32. 13:30 Small is the way to go on BEVs, ideally as motorbikes (which a lot of "freedom-loving" Americans ironically fail to license for). We can see this hint in the massive popularity of electric-assisted bicycles. I had an electric motorbike and when I wasn't riding the Beijing metro the e-bike (which I modified to 125cc performance to roll with regular traffic to avoid the untrained riders and parked cars in the "bike lane") was the only way I got around town in all four seasons. Easily charged off a standard wall plug at home and the office, and there was always a charger with the bike since it's only a common power brick.
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  33. For America at least. Europe didn't wake up until last year.
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  34. ​ @MrRedsjack The risk is if they assert being other than American (i.e. entry on another passport) when they're in trouble, the US has no obligation to support them. So no evacuation offers or jail visits when their trip goes tits up.
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  35. ​ @kenho-wr5ul2rh7m Every developed industry is trying to manufacture Na-ion batteries. China is just trying to scale up before anyone else.
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  36. The US is arguably the peacekeeper, providing Europe the space to enjoy that peace dividend through all the "wars" that contained threats away from their homelands and global sea lanes. Now they're realizing that an alliance of one isn't a credible enough deterrence, and that they need to invest in their own capabilities in order to contribute and benefit from the actual mutual support that an alliance promises.
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  37. Consumer-driven "recycling" itself was a marketing campaign by plastics producers who both knew their products was economically unrecoverable, but didn't want to take responsibility for all the waste and damage they were creating. Hence they shamed us into thinking we can do something about it, instead of sticking to the more containable glass, metal, and paper packaging we had been using before.
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  38. The US tried to stay neutral and open in WWI, and cut off oil to Japan who was undergoing its own offensive imperialism into China by that time.
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  39. It's more intense because the domestic market saturated as the average Chinese consumer's buying power shrank during and after Zero-COVID. The sudden availability of Chinese EV exports are largely due to lack of demand at home, not a surge of quality production.
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  40. If anything African millionaires moves their assets out to places like Dubai, Europe, or America as fast as practicable. At least that’s what I noticed and heard about while I lived there.
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  41. We’re not very good at choosing the “merits” though. Being too selective for high-earning college-educated professionals can make the hosting community more expensive, inconsiderate, and artistically bland as the place gentrifies and homogenizes.
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  42. Dubai makes even Hollywood seem super chill, the lack of petty crime in public areas makes the people (migrants included) even more selfishly obnoxious. South Korea and Shanghai aren't too far behind in their form over function mentality -- apparently a bit of personal danger keeps people focused on what's real.
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  43. China is more worried that the US could blockade China. They depend on open sea lanes for affordable food, fuel, and foreign revenue. An invader would need to disable like half of the US to stop its self-sufficiency, whereas an invader into China doesn't even need to step foot on its soil.
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  44. Lack of housing limited by a policy preference for detached single-family homes, already occupied by long-lived owners with a well-established occupation/pension who don't want to let go of their low Prop 13 property tax rates.
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  45. I would support Reps and Senators to be eligible only three times consecutively, then be forced to seek some other office or go do something else entirely.
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  46. STEM students in general have to be forced to take humanities courses, just to balance their minds and mitigate madness in their science. There's a reason STEM folks generally fail as managers and politicians: not everything humans care about can be enumerated as simple variables they can calculate.
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  47. Which is getting less relevant as technology and more nuanced historical studies renders that senior "wisdom" obsolete if not proven mistaken. Really their main advantage is the ability to relate to each other in person, having grown up in a more physically connected environment without the remoteness of the internet and the disruption of community-breaking globalized capitalism.
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  48. ​ @luthorcorp0 We already have so many jobs, companies just refuse to hire, train, and pay accordingly, because they really want skilled immigrants for whom a US address alone is valuable compensation and whom they can constantly threaten with deportation due to separation. It's not going to be durably better with Trump because so many of those new jobs are either remote-workable (able to hire an American expat or complete foreigner overseas who would accept lower pay as they enjoy even lower costs of living) or extremely automated (postsecondary education required to understand how to troubleshoot and tweak the factory stations, with only a handful needed for 24-hour operations). Meanwhile his small government platform discourages Americans from studying for vital and already-underpaid professions like teachers and physicians.
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  49. Democrat renters dominated by conservative homeowners who chose to be born some decades earlier and could buy when houses were still affordable, who spend now spend all their free time defending their real estate-based wealth and "character of the neighborhood" in city councils.
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  50. Sadly that also discourages people from moving out to better opportunities, including living in the same area in a denser environment per popular demand. A lot of California's housing crisis is explained by older established bungalow owners refusing to move on from the Cold War.
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  51. Funny how the places the rich concentrate on are Five Eyes states, or those that rely on visible US military presence… and the list of aspiration for ultimate residence isn’t too different for the less well-off. If the movement of people and their wallets count as votes, it’s clear that the Western “pole” is by far the only one worth pointing towards.
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  52. Do you know who QCs the iPhone? Hint: they're not Mainlanders.
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  53. That's the tradeoff for not building up, instead opting to sprawl out 1-2 storey wooden McMansions into wildfire territory. But doing what the rest of the world figured out would ruin the "character" of your neighborhood at the cost of the masses of potential California taxpayers who are still dying to move in.
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  54. Plus the intentionally increasing difficulty of obtaining registration for an ICE vehicle, while EV plates are still open season.
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  55. HOA doesn't pay for schools and emergency services. Also the biggest source of homeowner stress is often the HOA.
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  56. Buy in on "Boyler Plate" coin!
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  57. Although there was a similar argument when we began buying ICE vehicles instead of horses -- gas stations were far away and the roads more suitable for legs rather than wheels. The EV adoption ultimately doesn't have as big of a barrier as long as chargers are rolled out at least as quickly; if you have electricity, you have the capability to top up a battery.
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  58. The only real "private" would be fully family-run, every other organization has various degrees of Party oversight into their operations. That's kind of the point of Communism.
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  59. "I got mine, you piss off" says those same people
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  60. Particularly the older established bungalow-owning retirees who dominate local politics (and thus land use policies), benefitting themselves at the cost of everyone else who's dying to move in.
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  61.  @somerandominternetdweller More like wood construction is cheap, especially with nobody else coming close to how much America in produces in farmed lumber 🌲🌲🌲🇺🇸
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  62.  @IshmaelPrice Just shows how deeply laissez-faire libertarian the US already is despite all its complaints about “high taxes”.
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  63. Yeah not so much "freeloading" as having some supplement, where you still need to hustle to make up for the rest of your living expenses.
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  64. More like not enough employees processing the backlog of applications, along with a shortage of construction workers who have skills beyond balloon-frame bungalows. Regulations exist because they're written in blood.
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  65. We still need meat though. It's not hard to find the health issues associated with veganism, and cutting out animal products would compel us to evolve into the mindless inefficiently-digesting cows we're "saving". Even durable vegetarian diets still rely a lot on dairy and often eggs too.
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  66. Inheriting over a century of entrenched conservative interests that they're still trying to negotiate around, especially after Reagan's governorship.
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  67. Beijing is betting that Americans don't have as big an appetite for losses, so combat will be a deterrence in itself. I'd wager that they underestimate our resolve once they start slamming the cities of our friends, the largely air and naval battles won't be able to provide live news updates that attrite our willingness, and they overestimate how patriotic Chinese families will remain when their only sons disappear on deployment.
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  68. Yeah at least immigrants work. The homeless Americans that other states quietly bus in not so much.
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  69. Winner-take-all voting naturally results in two parties: the one victor, and the lot of all losers. Yet moderating alternatives like ranked-choice polls are exactly what's being preemptively banned by GOP-run states.
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  70. Democrats inheriting the interests of a more conservative and wasteful history.
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  71. It already is an agricultural powerhouse. Thing is we're selling off the limited water reserves that California farmers can realistically access as exports to multinational corporations and out-of-state markets, one which the scarcity-driven prices and historically unlimited usage rights only encourages more of.
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  72. There's also the fact that the Sierra Mountains trap smog, which compelled California to use a more detergent-heavy blend unique to the state. If you thought LA Smog is bad now, you should have seen the air quality from before even when less people were on the roads.
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  73. I'd bet think tank. They're the scapegoats when an "analysis" (always conveniently aligned with those of their sponsor) doesn't go as planned. Elon is just getting set up to be a mulligan for the bad ideas of Trump and his MAGA Republicans.
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  74. The tariffs was America being protectionist against all countries during the Great Depression. The "ABCD Line" (as in encirclement by America, Britain, China, and Dutch) didn't arise until after Japan had seized Manchuria and began invading China Proper in 1937.
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  75. Look a bit harder at Google Earth and check out how not-flat and fire-prone the terrain is where it's connected to the places people actually want to move to. Agglomeration Effect is a real thing especially if you enjoy consistent compensation.
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  76. Or attempt to anyway. Every previous great dynasty fell basically because of internal political scheming and lack of more open criticizing of leadership within the court, leaving its empire vulnerable to domestic rebellions and military setbacks. Ironically the "stability" sought by its autocracies over the ages just makes the country more brittle.
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  77. That’s why pumped-hydro resevoirs may be key, either as new builds (any elevation change works including hilltops and old mine shafts) or by retrofitting existing dams.
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  78. A star going supernova is brightest right before it goes dark forever.
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  79. Capitalism in general favors and rewards sociopaths. That's why without the constraints of regulation, the free market M&A's itself into monopoly and charges through the nose the rest of us for the privilege of access to their economy.
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  80. "If government would shut the doors and sneak away for about three weeks, we'd never miss 'em"... that aged well considering the deletrious effects of GOP-led federal shutdowns 📉
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  81. It's also they're mostly retired, so they have all day to get politically indoctrinated by mass media and wait in line at the polls, taking advantage of pro-traditionalist politics that make voting deliberately inconvenient to working adults with their more "disruptive" progressivist ideas.
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  82. Probably because Russian oligarchs discovered it’s way easier to exchange Rubles into Dollar-pegged Dirhams that it is into Pounds Sterling 💱
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  83. If the answer was that simple, he wouldn't waste a half hour plus production time explaining it.
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  84. I'd bet the DOGE just turns out to be no better than a sponsor-validating "think tank" that's just directly funded by taxpayers. Elon is just being set up as a scapegoat when one of those DOGE ideas crashes well short of the moon.
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  85. Is it at least entertaining, like in Taiwan where they have constant fistfights only to break for a Legislative Yuan?
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  86. ​ @BlindedByLogic Father Time isn't a spring chicken himself, especially being bribed by the senior care paid by retirees cashing out the massive equity off their then-affordable homes, often paid by corporations rather than young adults who actually need a place for themselves.
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