Do greedy millionaires and billionaires...

[Santti]

Are you claiming that you have psychic visions of an inevitable and immutable future? Or are you claiming that science fiction is reality?

It's one of the two, and both are completely fucking ridiculous.

We can't predict future based on past trends, but we sure can predict future based on Star Trek.

Why are you guys debating literally anything with him, again? No one is this dumb, as to believe what PC2 is arguing. Not even himself.

[JohnBrown1917]

We can't predict future based on past trends, but we sure can predict future based on Star Trek.

...so socialist one-world government? I had no idea pc2 was a socialist all this time.

[Endus]

We can't predict future based on past trends, but we sure can predict future based on Star Trek.

Why are you guys debating literally anything with him, again? No one is this dumb, as to believe what PC2 is arguing. Not even himself.

Not so much debating as signalling to passersby how misinformed his posts are, since willful ignorance has a tendency to metastasize throughout the population if left alone.

[Santti]

Not so much debating as signalling to passersby how misinformed his posts are, since willful ignorance has a tendency to metastasize throughout the population if left alone.

Possibly... But surely there's some kind of limit to that? I mean, this is 1+1=3 territory at this point, and has been for quite some time with PC. Surely that won't affect anything at all, no matter how many times he repeats it? Surely nobody is thinking that they want to subscribe to his newsletter?

Please tell me that's something that doesn't happen...

And if we want to battle misinformation, isn't there a risk that some T-words will get encouraged by this... "debating", only to increasing the amount of misinformation? People are fucking goofy.

[Shadowferal]

Why are you guys debating literally anything with him, again? No one is this dumb, as to believe what PC2 is arguing. Not even himself.

Oh I don't know...it would explain much if he believed all this time that Star Trek was the future. Even his "human supremacy" feelings of which I'm sure neither Klingon nor Vulcan would approve of.

[Mihalik]

In the far future people can make what's called a "universal constructor" or "molecular assembler" that is similar to the replicators in Star Trek TNG. An ecosystem would not be needed after that point because it could assemble anything that RNA/DNA can assemble.

What's your solution to immediate and short to medium term global catastrophic problems affecting billions of people worldwide?

-Future magic from Star Trek.

[Endus]

What's your solution to immediate and short to medium term global catastrophic problems affecting billions of people worldwide?

-Future magic from Star Trek.

Should we point out that the Star Trek future necessarily requires;

1> Global nuclear devastation in WWIII
2> Friendly alien species (Vulcans, specifically) who helped uplift us after we made our first interstellar jump

Just to add to the whopping pile of WTF.

[Edge-]

plenty of "average" looking people are with "good looking " partners so theoreticaly nothing is stopping you as long as you achieve certain amount of success in life/have other interesting qualities that attract opposite sex. .

No no, specifically Carmen Electra. I'm just clearly not working hard enough, because everything is possible if you want it enough according to this nonsense line of logic.

- - - Updated - - -

Should we point out that the Star Trek future necessarily requires;

1> Global nuclear devastation in WWIII
2> Friendly alien species (Vulcans, specifically) who helped uplift us after we made our first interstellar jump

Just to add to the whopping pile of WTF.

Also, the embrace of a a functionally communist economic system that somehow functions within a strict hierarchical command structure.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf... I think I'm falling in love with Carmen Electra.

[Yadryonych]

Carmen Electra isn't a luxury, she's a human right everyone should have access to. We demand universal basic Carmen Electra

[Rennadrel]

Do greedy millionaires and billionaires hide behind the middle class for the same reasons terrorist hide behind innocent civilians the only difference is paying politicians to make it legal?

I seen a snippet on Yahoo Kylie Jenner set up a Gofundme for one of her employees and it made me wonder.

Elon Musk being a pretty good example now too.

Elon Musk is an example of someone who isn't a true billionaire. His wealth comes from government contracts, paid for by tax payers. At some point when governments stop subsidizing Tesla, his value will plummet. It might take a while as governments seem gung ho on forcing electric vehicles sooner than later.

[Sorensen]

Elon Musk is an example of someone who isn't a true billionaire. His wealth comes from government contracts, paid for by tax payers. At some point when governments stop subsidizing Tesla, his value will plummet. It might take a while as governments seem gung ho on forcing electric vehicles sooner than later.

I mean they subsidize space X sure but not tesla.

[Felya]

Elon Musk is an example of someone who isn't a true billionaire. His wealth comes from government contracts, paid for by tax payers. At some point when governments stop subsidizing Tesla, his value will plummet. It might take a while as governments seem gung ho on forcing electric vehicles sooner than later.

Do you have an example of a real billionaire?

[Xarkan]

What's your solution to immediate and short to medium term global catastrophic problems affecting billions of people worldwide?

-Future magic from Star Trek.

Thought plenty of people had their plan in regards to climate change be "we dont need to do anything, technology just around the corner will fix everything"

[kamuimac]

Elon Musk is an example of someone who isn't a true billionaire. His wealth comes from government contracts, paid for by tax payers. At some point when governments stop subsidizing Tesla, his value will plummet. It might take a while as governments seem gung ho on forcing electric vehicles sooner than later.

it wont happen - because without them subsidising Tesla he wouldnt be able to keep up his space program runing - and his space program is in fact goverment sponsored out sourcing of NASA after few failed missions and budget cuts.

so as long as US goverment keeps Space X runing he will have plenty of buget money for Tesla.

[Forogil]

What you're forgetting is that there are many nations today that are building themselves up today like Europe and Asian countries did back then. Billionaires in the US are making metric fucktons more than they ever have in history and the poorest are only racking up debt.

Did the entirety of the US suddenly become lazy around 1978, or is our system perhaps flawed, since many european nations with far better wages and social programs have high economic mobility in all wealth brackets?

Something surely happened around 1978; the car production in the US dropped from more than 9 million to less than 6 million in about a year and then entered a slow decline; https://tradingeconomics.com/united-...car-production

Specifically the second oil crisis happened and the US car manufacturers were slow to adapt, whereas lots of other countries had been catching up. Oversimplified scape-goats have been found ever since - the government during Reaganomics, and in this thread the billionaires. And obviously using domestic production (of cars or other stuff) as a metric is a remnant of the mercantalistic(sp?) ideas.

[Mihalik]

Just to add to the whopping pile of WTF.

A tidbit that's more unrealistic than WW3+Friendly aliens is that the first warp capable ship was built out of unlaunched ballistic missile in a post-apocalyptic landscape by a dude in his garage using mostly scrap.

A core problem with "future tech will fix it" is the assumption that the material conditions in which such gigantic technological leaps can be achieved will persist in a rapidly declining environment.

As things like water shortages, extreme weather events, mass migration, population displacement and food shortages become the norm, rather than the exception, it's questionable if the tax/resource base will exist to continue funding mostly theoretical research that might, possibly in a generation or two yield something with a real life application.

Our civilization is built on the ruins of dozens of other civilizations that were wiped out by local ecological pressures. It's not unreasonable to assume that our global modern civilization might experience the same decline/collapse due to global environmental pressures.

I'm pretty sure there was some Middle Assyrian PC2 back circa 930BC saying that, people shouldn't worry about the droughts, the rains will come eventually.

- - - Updated - - -

Specifically the second oil crisis happened and the US car manufacturers were slow to adapt, whereas lots of other countries had been catching up. Oversimplified scape-goats have been found ever since - the government during Reaganomics, and in this thread the billionaires. And obviously using domestic production (of cars or other stuff) as a metric is a remnant of the mercantalistic(sp?) ideas.

Nobody blames BILLIONAIRES specifically for the issues we're facing. But they are a key component of it. Over the past 70 years corporations/tycoons have very successfully and gradually pushed for the adoption of an economic model that while extremely profitable for them, has gradually eroded the material conditions which allowed them to get that wealthy in the first place.

There's plenty of blame to spread around, the myth of the "protestant work ethic", consumerism, notions of post-colonial western exceptionalism and interventionism, the myth of the invisible hand of the markets as an economic corrector and more, but a lot of these issue are intrinsically tied to or are a byproduct of capitalism.

Note, I'm not saying that we should all go Soviet Union or whatnot, but the attitude that capitalism is the solution to all the ills of communism, and if communism is bad, then "more capitalism" is good is self evidently false.

[Endus]

it wont happen - because without them subsidising Tesla he wouldnt be able to keep up his space program runing - and his space program is in fact goverment sponsored out sourcing of NASA after few failed missions and budget cuts.

so as long as US goverment keeps Space X runing he will have plenty of buget money for Tesla.

You realize these are separate companies, yeah?

The US government paying Space X doesn't mean Tesla sees a dime.

[Sorensen]

You realize these are separate companies, yeah?

The US government paying Space X doesn't mean Tesla sees a dime.

A few dimes when spaceX buys model X's to ferry astronauts but that's it.

[Zan15]

I mean they subsidize space X sure but not tesla.

something like "all" of the current profit comes from environmental credits....

Eleven states require automakers sell a certain percentage of zero-emissions vehicles by 2025. If they can't, the automakers have to buy regulatory credits from another automaker that meets those requirements -- such as Tesla, which exclusively sells electric cars.
It's a lucrative business for Tesla -- bringing in $3.3 billion over the course of the last five years, nearly half of that in 2020 alone. The $1.6 billion in regulatory credits it received last year far outweighed Tesla's net income of $721 million -- meaning Tesla would have otherwise posted a net loss in 2020.


You don't get much more "subsidized" then that.


Of course they could still have a profit without the subsidy, they just need to stop with stock awards, bonuses, buybacks, ect..... should do wonders for the stock