This goes on all over the country. For every rotten officer that steals, there is a whole bushel back at the station that turn a blind eye and happily have bbqs with them on the weekends. Did you also know that when the police record an interview they do not have to preserve the tapes, the officers summary of the conversation is often taken as fact.
My close friend is opening a gym, part of this includes purchasing these thick rubber mats from Chinese suppliers. The new tariffs made it unprofitable when buying from china. His equipment supplier is currently negotiating with a US supplier. My friend is fine with waiting a few weeks.
I had my bank cancel all amazon music subscription charges after paying for it for almost a year after I stopped using it. Turns out they cancelled ALL charges from amazon. Am I a bad person?
And in the most recent version, it appeared to install more of an update behind the scenes, so there was less waiting if a reboot was required. As to why it’s more visible than Apple updates, I blame the lack of good, settled power management strategies for overnight wake-from-sleep use cases that Apple can specifically include parts and driver tuning for but that Microsoft seems to have a hard time with... oh and they refused to break legacy apps by introducing new APIs that restore app state after a reboot, which Apple introduced back in 10.7 Lion if I recall correctly.
They have the support of the military forces. So rioting doesn't work. It just gets you killed on the street with no repercussions for the government.
Also, the word "leader" implies that this is a legitimate democracy, which is not. Venezuela has an authoritarian corrupt government at best, a dictatorship at worst.
A wise leader once said: All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.
I think the quote is actually, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," per Google and Wikipedia. Is this part of Marxist theory, or Maoist? I genuinely don't know. I had always thought that Marx viewed the revolution as at least potentially peaceful, but I confess I have never read him.
Ah, I know who it was. I was more asking whether he was reflecting a viewpoint from earlier Marxist theory, or whether it was a novel viewpoint of his.
I think he based it on reality rather than theory. Every communist government has use force to "maintain the revolution": USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK, China, Romania, etc.
The reason the leaders of Venezuela still have their heads is that they first won free and fair elections and they then proceeded to do the will of the people.
The support of the military and by being a not so well known narcostate. If the situation would come to light properly maybe then we will see massive change. I am surprised nothing is done about it honestly.
The government still has the support of an enormous number of people, mostly from the largely non-white working classes, whose economic and political interests were trampled on by the pre-Bolivarian governments and who are naturally suspicious of the right-wing agitators currently attempting to overthrow the government with the backing of foreign powers
The US political situation is not even remotely comparable, ignoring the plundering of the economy by the government and military, in 2020 or by 2024 at the latest, the US WILL have a different president. Absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt.
There is no deep state. There is the rule of law, made by our representatives and questions are decided by courts. Regardless of one person's views, we make choices based on a legal basis.
Not really, remember how it turned out that the NSA was breaking the law? Nobody is really a first-world country, especially when the public isn't watching. The US is just first world more often than average. It probably has something to do with the fact that the public watches most of what's going on, at least on the basic level. Anywhere the public is confused (often the case for consumer and environmental issues) or deliberately kept in the dark (you-know-who) corruption runs rampant.
No course there is no perfection in our human choices. Laws are sometimes applied selectively. That doesn't mean you just give up and say it's all bad.
There shouldn't be secret laws. There are secret interpretations, I hate that. It doesn't mean I just give up and say everything is bad.
I also think parallel construction is very very harmful. Again, knowing it exists and being against it doesn't mean that I am giving up on the general rule of law.
We can ride a bike and chew bubblegum at the same time: Trump can be an odious human being (up to/including being unfit to serve) _and_ his political opponents can commit serious crimes in their efforts to defeat him (up to/including treason.)
High-level Obama FBI and intel officials are being investigated for their role in the FISA scandal/lies to congress and most have been removed from their positions.
Just don't want you to be shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when deep state perps get frogmarched off to prison.
If and when the FISA applications against Carter Page and others in the Trump campaign and transition team are declassified by a vengeful Trump, then we'll know whether the Obama administration weaponized the DOJ and FBI against their political opponents or not. After the declassification, let's discuss about whether there is a failing "deep state" or not.
Are you curious to know how many months into the 18-month Russian collusion investigation that Special Counsel Mueller knew the pee dossier, partly paid for by the HRC campaign, was an incontrovertible fake? Did Mueller know before or after the midterm elections? Whether you're curious or not, we're going to learn the truth soon. And that truth could be very painful, especially for deep state actors.
I don't know why it's relevant when Mueller knew some claims against Trump were fake. He was supposed to thoroughly investigate the issues around it. He wasn't supposed to just go until he found one or more issues not supported by facts. Because there can be some allegations that are true, and some that aren't.
It's relevant if it can be proven there were political motivations in holding those findings until after the midterm elections.
It's very relevant if Mueller was aware right at the start of the investigation that the dossier could not be corroborated. It's already been revealed that the FBI wouldn't have sought the FISA without the dossier. It's also been revealed that the FBI had not corroborated any of the dossier prior to filing the FISA application, nor before any of the monthly renewals.
What's been revealed so far is sketchy, but maybe it will all work out okay for Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein et al. At this point I'm betting Trump is still going to hit back 10x harder. People think Trump is a joke so they write him off, but he's incredibly powerful given the office. I just assume revenge is coming since Trump is who he is.
The problem is that the changes you propose rip out the framework that allowed our country to become a leader in many respects, show me a socialist or communist country that innovates, there are none, they all come to capitalist countries to learn and compete, your missing the forest for the trees mate.
Capitalism does encourage reward for innovation, which is why it works better... up to a point. Innovative people exist everywhere - it's part of who they are - but when no rewarded, they won't work. What we have in the US is that crafty, selfish businessmen manipulate the system and "invent" all kinds of walls that steal the rewards of innovation for themselves. Now we have tech "giants" and massive corporations that pay peanuts (in comparison with their actual profits off innovation), run the government, and want oppressive laws and treaties like the TPP.
As I'm fond of saying:
In a capitalistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power.
In a communistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power.
The means are different, but the result is the same.
People come to the US for its socialist school system, or the security of its socialist policing and fire services. Or the benefits of a socialist military industrial complex that prop up half the country and invest huge amounts into socialist research and development. People come for the security of the socialist banking system named too big to fail. Show me someone who comes for the capitalist healthcare or prison service...
There are very few countries in the world that lived by the laissez faire rules of capitalism, because its been a disaster every time.
Sure, but how much of that is down to the socialist things i listed, and how much is down to Wall street? Even if you believe mostly the latter; The success of the financial services of Wall St and private enterprise in the US is a direct result of socialist policies. Can you imagine any of this success without socialist schools? can you imagine any rule of law with a private police force?
If a country is too far socialist or too far capitalist, the result is the same; the few gaining great power and privilege, while the many are powerless and suffering in poverty. Its obvious that a balance is needed, socialism can be very good at leveling the playing field for basic necessities, while regulated capitalism can be good at distributing power hierarchies while remaining fairly efficient.
The problem i see us facing right now is that capitalism has had a lobby on political power for fifty years and is preventing this balance, substituting its own power-wealth hungry pseudo-balance. This is why we have difficulty dealing with climate change, and why places like the US are struggling with a universal health system, or why the UK is dismantling theirs.
I agree with your point on laissez-faire capitalism. Unfettered capitalism never works. However, pardon me for beating down the straw-man. You box things in by naming a select few "socialistic" systems that seem to work (only because they've been here with everything else) and selecting a few capitalistic industries that are obvious failure. If socialism was so successful, then why don't people go to OTHER socialist nations in higher rates?
But to answer why people come here, I'd say they come for freedom and the hope of a future - and many try to stay. The east coast is full of Indian doctors who come here for their degree and have no intention of ever going back to India.
Yes, of course. That is why the US was the first nation to send a man to space, or have high speed bullet trains, or have accessible healthcare for everyone. Oh wait.
It only invented transistors, lasers, zippers, the internet, carbon fiber, airbags, information theory, aluminum smelting, television, induction motors, alternating current, radio communications, GPS, LED lamps, florescent lamps, incandescent lamps, nuclear power, magnetic storage, RADAR, refrigeration, solar panels...
But hey, the Soviets beat us into space by about a month. All they had to do was murder a million of their political opponents and then starve their people for a few decades. You decide if it was worth it.
And if you think the US has a "free market" healthcare system you are quite mistaken.
Please don't do nationalistic or ideological flamewar on HN, even if someone else started it. Also, please don't snark. This is in the site guidelines:
I'm not Chinese and not a fan of the PRC, but you can't honestly believe all research from China is stolen. Assuming proper nutrition and exposure to education, there are intelligent and innovative people everywhere. Probabilistically speaking, with those assumptions, the larger the population, the more of that innovative potential they're likely to have.
Also, it's efficient to steal ideas. I assure you, given the opportunity, businesses in the US frequently steal ideas/IP as well, they're just more careful about it because there's more consequences. Why do you think so many IP lawsuits exist.
Furthermore, stealing or copying a successful process is in human nature for survival, heck, it's part of the foundations of evolution. Most people are only concerned when it's their ideas being stolen but not when they "borrow" others'.
Oh for sure, there are smart people everywhere, as I note in a comment elsewhere. In this case, I was simply returning one overly simply retort with another.
They don't, they fire the employees that got caught, then rebrand the group that does the laundering as a new "wealth management" group, and start the cycle again.
