zephyreks

I, too, like evaluating investments based on "how easy is it for me to make" rather than "what is the risk/return."

Ukraine needs two things, and as many of these two things as possible: artillery shells, and drones. That's what this entire war has hinged upon, that's what's causing the vast majority of equipment and personnel losses, and that's what Ukraine is lacking.

The US and EU somehow cannot scale artillery shell production as fast as Russia despite Russia being sanctioned to hell and back, meanwhile, they're antagonizing the world's leading supplier of drones with trade war bullshit instead of buying up Chinese drones to give to Ukraine. Chinese companies don't give a fuck who uses their products.

The US and EU need to dump money into their MIC, and they need to do it yesterday. They're not, because they're convinced that a NATO war with Russia would not go the same way, but them believing that is them not recognizing that Ukraine is exactly how modern warfare will go.

You can't move troops in secret. You can't mass large formations for attack. You can't gain air superiority with perfect SEAD. The future of warfare is knowing that everything you do can be watched by a drone operator tens of kilometers away. It's knowing that air defence systems are absurdly mobile, absurdly distributed, and that random units can launch SAMs at you to deny you CAS capability. Meanwhile, you don't need A-10 style CAS capability because glide bombs and advanced targeting mean you can drop your bombs from tens of kilometers away as well, where there was never any risk of you being targeted.

Drones, smart munitions, and advanced communications have made Cold War doctrine obsolete. Russia took a ton of losses learning that at the start of the war. Armoured columns get blown up by cheap drones you buy off of Alibaba. CAS helicopters and aircraft get blown out of the sky by cheap MANPADS that every unit has. Masses of troops get a grenade dropped on them from nowhere. The entire principle behind Cold War doctrine was that you needed something expensive to take out something expensive. You need your trillion dollar stealth fighter. You need hundreds of tanks. You need massive combined arms pushes organized through a 300-step carefully choreographed plan. That's simply no longer true. Back in previous conflicts, drones were something expensive, not something every script-kiddie with access to their parents credit card can buy and every 14 year old with an Internet link can build with parts off of Digikey.

Sending troops is a PR stunt. It won't help the fact that Ukraine is running out of artillery shells (again) and the trade war (with Ukraine getting caught in the crossfire) has made access to Chinese drones with Chinese semiconductors increasingly challenging.

Putting it more simply: one guy with a drone can knock out a tank. One guy with a drone and an artillery team can suppress an entire sector. Seems to me like the solution should be to give Ukraine more drones and more artillery.

You wouldn't want US homes in Europe, either. Most of the world has astonishingly shit construction in the name of higher profits and the understanding that housing has very limited lifespans.

Some US homes are great - robustly built, well-insulated, quiet, no leaky sewage, no leaky building membrane, wires routed properly, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of them were built decades ago. If you're evaluating them in terms of materials or construction quality, US housing quality has gone straight off a cliff. Sure, there's a bunch of glass facades on new buildings, but they hide the fact that sound insulation between units is nonexistent, the heat insulation is barely slapped together, the outlets aren't all plugged in, and the hot water either turns completely on or completely off. Tour a new California townhouse and tell me again that it's not built as cheaply as possible. Developers have figured out how to be stingy on everything you can't see and instead dump money on fancy appliances and a marble countertop... Even if the toilet clogs if you look at it funny and you can hear your neighbour three doors down humming to himself.

Meanwhile, most US new build apartments are 5 over 1s, which are notorious for being a tinderbox. Though, US fire code is really well done, so if there's a fire odds are you can make your way out in time.

I never understood how slavery could stand for so long... But I guess now I do?

Nevermind that the embargo on Cuba limits the utility of US money.

Edit: for a similar scenario, look at the conditions for Haitian "independence" from France. France forced Haiti to pay for the lost property (read: slaves) that were freed by independence, costing the Haitian economy something like 20 billion dollars of economic contribution... For daring to free slaves. But oh no my agreements!

Aww honey, don't be mad because you got proven wrong.

This is such a silly gesture lmao

If you don't know, Myanmar's junta (and it's allies) primarily control coastal regions while the rebels primarily control inland areas. In fact, I'm fairly sure only one rebel group has ocean access. These patrol boats are about as big of a white elephant as possible.

Most insurgency groups run resupply through Yunnan and move money through Chinese companies. You can see this being reflected in their territorial control: it's predominantly in the north, with some territories along the border with Thailand (from which other groups smuggle resources through Thailand).

Whoever engineered this deal is a comedian.

AA (the only group with coastal access) basically doesn't use naval resupply, and Myanmar isn't exactly known for being an open plain. White elephant indeed.

Why does the US have a base in Guantanamo Bay, anyway? I thought the government of Cuba has protested it for literally half a century?

I guess it's for the same reason why the US embargo of Cuba has seen mass condemnation in the UN General Assembly for more than 30 years without result...

Might makes right?

Honey, the OP posted a house in what's essentially the slums of San Jose. It's sandwiched between a highway and an airport in an act of urban planning that would make Robert Moses weep with pride. Who's not arguing in good faith?

What, exactly, do you think justifies US aggressive intercepts of Russian bombers flying in international airspace near Alaska, then? By your definition, they're just navigating and should not be impeded.

Sure, I agree, but your claim hinges on the fact that the Chinese EV market lacks competition (like, say, Russia with Gazprom and nobody else).

That's easily disprovable.

1. Land management. In the same way that changing zoning is not a subsidy, changing land management rules is not a subsidy. It's government support, agreed, but to call it a subsidy...?

2. Subsidizing low income housing. This has been a new policy used to seize distressed assets and make sure they don't sit... Well, distressed. The central bank is an arm of the government, and the government is achieving it's goals of housing access. At the end of the day, your claims on profit detract from the actual benefits of public housing.

By your arguments, public transit is robbing Peter to pay nobody, because the government sure as hell doesn't recover operating costs from fares. That's never been the point of public infrastructure.