flipht

Our entire society is set up to wring out anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves buying anything.

And as resources get squeezed, more and more people are trying to claw at smaller and smaller pieces of the overall economic pie.

The breaking point will be catastrophic.

Could be other factions trying to isolate Putin.

The issue is that you can't guarantee there won't be harm, and by doing it and not stopping it in the future, you are inviting others to do similar stuff. And probably to one up each other.

And eventually there will be an accident and something important will be lost forever.

Y'all are really out here acting like "no harm no foul" like you'd be fine with your toddler running into the street because "nothing happened!" This time. Next time, a semi could be speeding by.

Exactly. A broken clock is right twice a day. If "idiot" rich people can monetize their mistakes, consistently do so, and manage to do it almost as if by using the same playbook as each other...they're not idiots, it is on purpose, and they just want enough plausible deniability that they don't get strung up from a Michelin star restaurant.

I mean, you're kind of seeing this with Donald Trump's legal issues. He can't get anyone with real clout, so he's actually facing consequences in that arena now.

That assumes all things are equal.

They rely on you repeating this adage to get away with this shit. It's too consistent. If he were actually stupid, he'd face negative consequences, which is something these folks very rarely have to do.

He does not have to do it himself. He has accountants and lawyers who can take his stupid decisions and turn them into money.

At a certain point the economies of scale of being a billionaire just keep you rich. What I've said is pretty standard tax bullshit that they grow up pulling.

No one will convince me he isn't doing this on purpose to tank the brand.

He and his buddies were mad that they couldn't compete. So he made the offer in a manic moment, and then was forced to go through with it. Now that he's got it, he's going to destroy it, and use the loss to reduce his taxes from all his government contracts.

And he simultaneously gets to platform fascists and silence people calling out the powerful. Wins all around.

For a normal person, this looks like failing. I totally get that. But rich people can derive massive benefits from stuff that would ruin us, and every single thing Musk is doing benefits him in some way.

Help them locate resources that are working on solutions.

Energy grid storage news, low emission building, DIY stuff have all been mood savers for me.

At the end of the day, we are all going to die. Our species is going to die. If it's next year because Yellowstone erupts and blots out the sun, or next week because Russia decides to go full MAD, or millions of years from now because interstellar travel lanes collapse...all we can do is the best we can with what's in front of us.

For me, now, that means thinking about what I can do without. It means having a bug out bag to know I can tough out a day or two away from home. It means having emergency plans in place and other options for rolling with the punches. It also means looking out for the others around me and trying to build networks that look out for each other.

I believe the world is falling apart, but I think we have an opportunity to fall gracefully and maybe, if we are lucky, we can pass something on to the future that might grow into something new. The end likely won't be worldwide cataclysm, so imo the best thing to do is to prepare to be mobile in a crisis.

Sure, burn pits and other crap will help.

But this kind of ammo, kids will find and hang on to. They bring it home, add it to their collection of other cool shit they've scavenged...and then their brothers and sisters are born with malformed limbs, mishaped heads, etc.

There have been a lot of stories written about it over the years. The one I read was specifically about Iraq I believe, but it was a while ago.

It's not about them. It's the children who find the spent ammo later.

This crap is the reason that there are birth defects spikes anywhere the US military operates.

It also drives home the point to anyone in a position of authority and responsibility: you will be asked to make compromises. You will be asked to make sacrifices. You must be willing to accept your own responsibility in that decision making, because you put yourself in position to do so.

Sometimes, when faced with only negative choices, you have to be willing to accept the stain of the least evil of them.

Kind of like every American president is an unindicted war criminal. We can imagine that most, if not all, of them didn't go into it to commit evil acts, but they had to be ready to do so if the other options were worse based on whatever calculus they were able to do at the time.