You wouldn’t call a room behind a locked door “obscured.” Even if it’s technically correct in the most stretched definition (which I’m not convinced of), either way it’s not how people actually use the word.

That's fascinating, thanks for the insight.

I work in fintech; we use a mix of Scala and Node. Scala for heavy data processing pipelines, Node for our client API, due to Node’s very fast cold start times in lambda.

There’s obviously much more nuance to our choices in the modern world than “live in a work-till-death society” or “live as primitives in the woods.”

For instance, many other developed nations take twice as much time off (or more) compared to American workers and seem to be doing just fine.

Yep, I agree. I just mean to say that the simple peaceful life that some are able to attain nowadays is possible due to the way our society is currently setup. Banding together in larger and larger tribes has been required because other people were doing the same and other people put their tribe's well being ahead of others. Whether they like it or not, those living the simple peaceful life are a part of our tribe and they benefit from the protection that our tribe provides.

That’s why I don’t trust any of these new trendy banking apps; better to stick with established institutions IMO. Not that they’re great either but at least you won’t be in a situation like this, or at the very least they’ll have better customer support.

It's why I switched everything to a combination of [boring established brokerage] and a credit union that's been around for almost 100 years. Their apps are mediocre and some of the more complicated account changes require a mix of faxed forms and phone support that's only available during normal business hours. But they're unlikely to mess things up very much and they're hopefully less likely to sell or leak all of my financial and personal information. And if something goes wrong my brokerage has in-person customer support branches around the country.

I'm in the same boat, with half my checking in the brokerage and half in the credit union. Some recent changes to the credit union(merging/renaming/ui changes) have been frustrating me and I've thought about rolling everything to the brokerage's offering, but the redundancy is nice for a situation like described here. Knock on wood though since it hasn't happened yet.

credit unions are great. Typically very customer friendly (i.e. no stupid monthly fees), many have been around a long time, and have rolled-out decent online banking options and mobile apps.

One party in the equation is a very powerful, profitable industry, the other is a huge but atomized group of people.

To assume that the only power dynamic at play is consumers making individual choices as fully rational, considerate actors is a vast oversimplification. Your equation isn’t more even, you’ve just flipped the one side, assuming that consumers have all the power and Hollywood is just haplessly following demand.

Yes, lowest common denominator viewers are the biggest purchasing group, and that’s the money that Hollywood is chasing. But that was true before. What changed isn’t the same consumers demanding more Avengers and less art films, but Hollywood setting their sights on the global audience, thus increasing the market for generic movies a hundred fold. Now the incentives are so skewed towards that group that the individual American consumer has next to zero power in influencing Hollywood’s direction with their dollars.

You also ignore the power of advertising and limited choice. Marketing can and does create an audience of consumers that didn’t exist before. It’s not about “here are my products, now you choose the best” it’s “here are my products and I will subtly convince you that you need them.” Consumers are not rational actors in a classical sense of going to a market for a specific need and picking the best product from a wide selection. Marketing is sufficiently advanced that the owner of a supply can also create demand for it.

Finally, Hollywood also controls the selection of choices. So as others have pointed out, people who would prefer smarter films have to forego movies altogether if they really want to “vote with their dollars.” So they might still choose a sub par movie if they like the theater and their friends want to go.

PS: I’m not advocating for a solution, so much as I am pointing out that there’s more to market forces than a simplistic libertarian view of the market can offer. I think in this case it’s inevitable and Hollywood movies are just gonna be like that now. But there’s more at play than “oh well, consumers chose it!”

I don't see how you can look at the many coups against democratically elected foreign leaders who sought to nationalize their countries' natural resources being anything other than protecting the interests of American/British companies who wanted those resources for themselves.

You said a lot of words and strawman arguments without actually addressing any of the events in the article.

Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran, Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, several leaders of Laos, Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic, Joao Goulart of Brazil, and Juan Torres of Bolivia were all democratically elected leaders who got overthrown by CIA-backed coups. And that's not even the complete list.

EDIT: and several of those coups happened immediately after the victim countries attempted to nationalize their natural resources, such as oil and minerals, such that US and British companies could not extract them anymore. After the coups, the right-wing dictators which were installed often allowed those companies back in to continue their extraction. These are just historic facts, and the US government has declassified and acknowledged much of it.

Read OP's article. It's well-cited. I shouldn't have to summarize it for you in the comments.

I am not disputing the CIA did ethically wrong operations. I dispute the motivations were entirely "business interests". I also allege the OP is extremely one sided and has an agenda to smear the whole American nation, including its people, and including its current government. And muddying the distinctions towards much more authoritarian governments.

I also gave the example of the Taliban. Cuba is another good example of a situation entirely without legitimate governments to overthrow.

Juan Bosch was not overthrown by the CIA, btw, whereas the murder of Trujillo, an actual dictator of the Dominican Dictator, probably had been done with CIA help.

I also don't see "nationalization" as such an ethically blameless thing. It's essentially stealing, from some point of view. To not see it that way - without sounding like a marxist idiot - requires careful analysis how the property situation came to be and how it is to be changed. Just taking back the oil rigs you sold a few years ago to an US company can't really be the answer.

> an agenda to smear the whole American nation, including its people, and including its current government

I think this speaks to a sensitivity on your part, to which you're overreacting. OP never alleged anything of the sort. You inferred that yourself.

The fact that I'm arguing is that the CIA committed coups against democratically elected leaders in many countries, which was ethically wrong, and you seem to agree with that. Great. Afghanistan and Cuba can be their own different examples for the sake of argument. I'm talking about the countries I listed above.

Moving on from that, I would argue that a nation-state has the ultimate authority to decide what is done with the natural resources it controls. If people fairly elect a government which decides to stop selling its resources to foreign companies and keep the resources for its own people, that trumps previous business agreements made by a different regime. Full stop.

But, for the sake of argument, let's say the above scenario is immoral. Is it so immoral that it deserves a coup and installation of a CIA-friendly dictator? I don't think anyone would argue that. The worst it merits is financial compensation to the affected company which can't extract resources anymore.

Finally, I'll elaborate and say that I don't believe any of those coups were entirely for resources - it was for resource access as well as the broader American geopolitical strategy at the time of toppling any regimes deemed too leftist in favor of right-wing dictators. Similar to the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union; it was about installing puppet states who are loyal to you so that you can extend your sphere of influence as an empire. Neocolonialism at its finest. But the resources were always part of the picture too.

> That’s to say were China to emerge as the world power, I don’t think they would take pause and just let things be.

I've heard that a lot, but I actually wonder if that's true or if it's just American paranoia projected onto a different ascendant power.

Just look at smaller players: Iran, Turkey, etc. Look at China's activities in SE Asia via a vis their neighbors. Look at their activities in international waters. They all project at least regional power.

You're saying given a larger playing field, they would forgo it. Let someone else project?

Not sure Iran is the best example - it is effectively surrounded by nations who want nothing more than to topple its leadership in favor of another West-friendly regime. Look at all the confirmed CIA activities listed in OP's article that have gone on in Iran. I chalk anything they do up to existential self-defense at this point.

Turkey isn't a great example either due to its NATO membership; their geopolitical motivations aren't that easy to pin down.

And yes, China acts very territorial towards Taiwan and the regional oceans. Taiwan and the surrounding ocean is the one exception to my statement; given the opportunity they'd take it without hesitation.

But for all those countries you listed, I really believe they would remain strong regional powers and not try to dominate the world the way the US does. Shocking as it may be to some of us in the British/American sphere of influence, most countries do not have imperial ambitions, and our opinions of places like China are heavily influenced by the military-industrial-media complex seeking to gin up resentment against foreign powers who don't bow to Western economic influence. (Much criticism of China is valid; that's beside this discussion specifically about imperialism).

I think you kind of missed what I said upthread. Specifically if they had our resources (size, location, resources).

So, if they had the resources the US has, I very strongly suspect they would be more muscularly assertive than we are when it comes to world affairs --as I pointed, out, even at their reduced size and power, they desire quite a bit.

Also, correction, China is not only rattling sabers with Taiwan, but Philippines, Vietnam, Japan too.

I suppose what I'm saying is that in order for a country to have the resources the US has and the political motivation to pursue empire, they'd have to have been on the path to empire for the last 200 years and come from the same sociopolitical history that has fueled the United States. So it's pretty steep conjecture.

In other words, yes, if China had the resources of the US it would be a global empire... because in order to have the resources the US has, you need to be a global empire.

This is just a pet theory at this point, I'm not an actual historian.

I looked - could not find any examples remotely comparable to those mentioned in the article.

They will never have such a playing field. China will never achieve global hegemony. Only the US can for geographic and economic reasons.

Yes, except there has been a concerted effort by monied interests in the upper strata of society to convince those below that organizing to demand better wages is useless at best or un-American at worst. It's an uphill battle.

> Startups were you get equity. Large companies where you can progress to high salaries if you are able to rise. Starting your own business and being competent at it. Working on commissions in an area where the commissions can be large -- true sales, or real estate. Being a professional, e.g. doctor, accountant, lawyer, has traditionally had high wages and you often run your own business.

This is all great if you have an aptitude for participation in the knowledge economy. That's not everyone. There used to be much more high-wage blue-collar work available to those who didn't fit that mold, but that has been ebbing away over time as America's manufacturing economy has been hollowed out.

Stronger unions and collective bargaining in the dwindling blue collar work that still exists is my only idea for how to improve things, but I'm not an expert.

> Yes, except there has been a concerted effort by monied interests in the upper strata of society to convince those below that organizing to demand better wages is useless at best or un-American at worst. It's an uphill battle.

Then you have to fight against this by organizing better and more widespread. Sometimes I do worry that all this information on Fox News and others about bogeymen distractions us from trying to better the things we actually can.

It may be that we are too easily distracted / disorganized / disheartened to better our position. And then we will not better our position.

But if you believe you can not change your fate, then you definitely can not. So I do suggest being like Obama and starting with community organizing and solidifying ones position locally and taking that larger. There are effective strategies to engage in. But they are not watching TikTok or YouTube all day.

I can't help but read this as a kind of "let them eat cake" argument. Sure, some cars have electric starters now... how does that matter? Plenty of poor, working class people do not own cars. They're getting priced out of the cities they've lived in their whole lives. Working class wages have been stagnant for decades. Healthcare and education costs have risen much faster than inflation. A huge percentage of Americans are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.

But yes, they do have access to cell phones and refrigerators, so good for them.

Look at the kinds of projects apartments and leaky rural shacks the poor of the 50s-70s lived in. You might have to combine five to get what we today consider one working set of appliances and utilities.

Section 8 apartments and double wides are such a massive step up from that. There will always be a bottom of the economic latter. But that bottom has moved up a lot over the past couple generations.

Mobility is a somewhat separate topic from what standard of living constitutes the bottom.

I'm not denying that. Of course average standards are better now than they were in the 1950's. But that argument is frequently used as a distraction to avoid talking about very achievable ways that we in America could improve living standards even further, or about very real ways in which lower class people are still suffering even though they might have an Xbox at home. All of the problems I mentioned in my above comment are still valid even though a section 8 apartment is better than a tin shed, yet you didn't address any of them. "There will always be a bottom of the economic ladder" is not an excuse for the wealthiest nation on earth to still allow people to be financially ruined for visiting the ER, for example.

Also, the myth of mobility is not an entirely separate topic, in that it's another distraction frequently employed to place problems on the individual and avoid talking about systemic changes that could take place to benefit people on a broader scale.

Their standard of living is going up.

And yet, if they or a family member have to visit the emergency room, they will likely be financially ruined.

I recently visited the ER for some chest pain which amounted to nothing and was charged $4,000 for it. Imagine what that would do to the 60% (!!) of Americans who can't come up with $500 for an emergency (see my top comment about stagnant wages, rising rent, and astronomical health care costs).

Comments like yours are easily and frequently used to distract from very real systemic problems that working class people still face. Access to cheaper smartphones doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but food and housing security and the ability to get medical treatment without fear of going bankrupt sure do.

I'm not so sure about this. Ask a random lower or middle class American if their quality of life has gone up in the last 20 years, I'm willing to bet most will say no. The world is far more competitive, has undergone a large amount of cultural decay and fragmentation, and certain important things like housing, education, and healthcare have gotten far more expensive.

> certain important things like housing, education, and healthcare have gotten far more expensive

This is what classist "but they have refrigerators" arguments love to obfuscate. Yes, a poorer person might still have a roof over their head and a smartphone. But they're spending a huge chunk of their income on rent. They want to move somewhere cheaper, but there are fewer opportunities, or their pay would go down too. They avoid seeking medical care because of how astronomically expensive it is, which makes future negative outcomes more likely (and more expensive). And seeking higher education amounts to taking on tens of thousands in debt from predatory lenders, with only a few college majors actually amounting to a good ROI.

It's not that poor people now have it worse than poor people in the 50's, it's that we shouldn't set the bar that fucking low in the richest country on earth. Our society could do so much more. That's what all these commenters are missing, willfully or otherwise.

Adam Smith observed many years ago that if you give people more money they tend to spend it on better dwelling places.

Medical care has always been expensive. We have made a lot of progress: 200 years ago those ER bills would be zero: because everyone just died from what we consider solvable today.

1. Have you observed that almost every other developed, first-world nation on earth has some kind of nationalized health care service for its citizens, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves?

2. Have you considered that Adam Smith's anecdata from 200 years ago may not be accurate anymore?

Having made progress since 200 years ago is no excuse for piss-poor progress compared to where we could be.

I've seen lots of people follow what I think are stupid things. You think national healthcare is a good idea, I don't. (I think we went wrong by making health insurance come from your job, and all the things you hate about our system are a result ofthe current system being good for the employers)

You don't need to get insurance through your employer anymore. That's what the ACA did. You can buy it on a marketplace and choose from dozens of plans, employed or not. It costs hundreds a month for an individual - thousands for families - for barebones insurance that covers almost nothing.

I'll restate my earlier point. The vast majority of Americans would suffer huge financial setbacks (to put it lightly) from one visit to the emergency room. Health insurance historically being tied to your employer isn't the problem, health insurance itself is the problem. It's a predatory industry which has successfully lobbied to make healthcare immensely lucrative for themselves and financially ruinous for average people.

It's interesting to me that you still think nationalized healthcare is "stupid" even though dozens of countries [1] have successfully implemented it. And yet you can look at the system we have here in the US, and say "oh it's just that it's tied to your employer. Otherwise it'd be fine." Healthcare isn't a commodity and shouldn't be marketed as such. The evidence that nationalized health systems can work well is everywhere. I also refused to see it for a while because of internalized fear of the "socialism" boogeyman, but turns out you can just do it and still have a capitalist market for other things. Go figure.

1. https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/hcra/univ_hlth_care.ht...

>Ask a random lower or middle class American if their quality of life has gone up in the last 20 years

What people say is often very different from the truth. It is hard to measure make an objective measure of quality of life, but that doesn't mean the subjective measure is actually correct.

Subjective measures are everything when considering quality of life.

Fine, then subjectivity I conclude they are liars. Since you don't accept objective facts you have to agree I'm right for me and we are done.

Suit yourself, but this kind of thing matters in a democracy where everyone has the capacity to influence the direction of the government.

High rent is a reflection of that. The problems start when the standard of living grows faster than your income.

Edit: High rent grants you access to higher paying jobs but not everyone actually gets those.