fake_meows

But what if you make a department of Honey Bun Efficiency? There is surely a simple solution for your fiscal crisis.

Lots to think about and react to here, but I just wanted to pick up one point:

about how the energy pie is divided up, [...] genuine concern for fairness has to be as much or more about lowering the wealthy than lifting the poor.

At the very extreme of things there is this idea of the "billionaire bunker". Like people can somehow cordon off climate change and energy collapse and all of these destructive forces, IF they have enough MONEY.

I question this. I suspect that many of these ideas take for granted many assumptions about collapse being somehow containable.

Like, are oil wells, tankers, electrical grids and refineries and distribution systems all going to keep running so that the rich can live life as usual while everything else goes to ruin? We will still have a system?

I have noticed this in my own area. Forests in this area are logged in a cycle spanning multiple decades.

What I picked up on is that when patches are logged during years where the summer has droughts and heat waves, new trees do not regenerate. When summers are colder and wetter the forest will grow back normally.

So there is a clear mosaic where there are 10 and 12 year old bare patches and 5 year old patches where the trees are shooting up and doing well, and sometimes the new logging scars look to have the older forests and the old cuts seem like they just happened.

He had 20+ open federal level investigations at the time of the national elections, and basically I believe his entry into national politics was most likely motivated as an attempt to circumvent the consequences. Getting embedded into government was his "get out of jail" card.

It's left to the individual states to push him out now. Just as a practical matter, the federal level is too corrupt to hold his companies to account.

The USA is highly dependent on China for animal feed supplements (all the vitamins and minerals and amino acids that they add to raw grain to make it a complete diet for factory farm raised animals).

About 50% of all the staple crops are exported, and that market will collapse. Farmers may choose not to plant anything if the market prices are too low to cover their operations.

Normally all the trucks and train cars get filled up and take our food products to the ports , empty, then fill up with imports. Since we will not be exporting, the costs of running empty trucks and trains all over will double the transport cost components. Even for distribution of domestic food items the transport system will not be efficient any more.

It's a complex system of interdependencies that will unravel in unexpected ways.

We are definitely not covered for what will happen.

We could tolerate everything except intolerance itself.

You and I completely agree, it seems.

So how come you think it wouldn't be a very good piece of public policy to be crystal clear and honest about that?

Like why can't the state say: "we are not subsidizing this business with taxpayer money any more, because of their ethics"?

You can make a legal case against Tesla for accounting or SEC violations or tax fraud...but that's not taking a moral stand.

But why do you want to attack Musk though?

Are you mad because he cheats on his taxes or his wives? We should probably broadcast that our only problem is with his taxes. That would be a better way, right? Like, dont call him out morally, tolerate that and just look for a legal case?

Do you see the problem?

That is to say I'm no stranger to "voting with my wallet".

"A little fascism is okay when it's my side doing it" and I say that is not okay.

You are DEEPLY confused.

Fascism is literally the system of government where businesses and the state merge. So Tesla has received over $20B in direct government subsidies and the CEO is part of the federal government.

There is no "free marketplace", not any more.

Voting with your wallet, like fascism is literally that. Literally. This is the mechanism.

This is all going to have to change to get out of this deal. People seem to actually not even know what fascism even looks like.

Just wow. You are parroting the exact ideology. This is the actual mechanism they use.

Right now the state of NY is trying to revoke the special deal they gave Tesla's dealers to extricate themselves (the governnent) from propping up his scam business. The state subsidizes his operation and they are merely trying to end that. That's how it looks when you stop fascists -- you cut ties between the businesses and the government.

In the last place I lived, even the sewer lifting pumps also ran on electric and there was no backup. So once certain tanks and cisterns filled up and the pumps didn't kick on, the system quit working. The fresh water tanks would keep fresh water pressure for 2-3 days (gravity fed) but could not recharge/refill without power. The whole system only worked if there was reliable electrical supply .

In that location every cell tower ran on its own backup gas generator, so after a handful of hours the gas supply would run out and each tower would also fall off until a technician could get fuel delivered.

As OC stated, "The shops haven’t done anything to warrant revoking their licenses and rat’s [Musk's] activities are totally unrelated."

Yes, but see, I disagree. Musk's activities are related. Sorry, but that's a dumb opinion, I just can't even see how anyone can believe that.

But trying to slide that in as an assumed proposition is very important to your argument, because otherwise you are allowing an open Nazi to run a large business unchecked.

I defend Musk's God given right to be a Nazi, but I don't think there shouldn't be a consequence for it. A civilization is allowed to respond to this information.

No, these two things are not morally equivalent. This is well studied, start here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance