MentalM

Yeah, and also you should eradicate sparrows. Each sparrows consumed several kilograms of grain per year, so by eradicating them you will need even less agricultural land.

> little known fact

It is well known fact, that US do that so 20% of its population wouldn't die from starvation over the next 30 years with significant probability.

> We subsidize the planting of corn to produce ethanol -- one of the most inefficient forms of solar energy 'harvesting' possible

You subsidize it so the farmers have capacity to swiftly increase food production in any moment.

By design it should provide the most efficient way to get that capacity, not to provide the most efficient way to get energy.

> Very conservatively solar produces 30-50 times are much energy per acre as corn ethanol.

Corn ethanol never was about the energy. Corn ethanol needs so after several years of crop failure you just swap that corn with other culture and people do not starving.

> Its a self-reinforcing problem.

Problem? It is THE BEST solution we have. Any suggested alternatives are worse and less convenient.

> majority of reporting has been of the "Starship can't/doesn't/won't work" ilk

> The very same groups are now crying about a potential monopoly.

Be a realist: we should be thankful they don't do it simultaneously.

> Serious question - could they actually nationalize starlink?

Yeas, why not?

> Suppose starlink takes their C&C keys and builds a control center in some other country

That won't happen. It is obviously better to be fully legal billionaire (even if the government take away 99% of his assets) in the USA than to be in some other country (which can in any time change it's mind), wanted for treason by the USA. Not even close.

> But for the other 99.99% of humanity, there are certainly more cost-effective ways.

Are you telling us that you are not planning to buy Tesla Roadster? But what about the situation when there will be huge snow storm and humongous tree will fall across the road, and you will be like really hungry and you could just to fly over it and not starve to death?

> The question of emergency power is a rational one

And the additional value of Cybertruck in this question is about $1000 - $1500. $1k of additional value for $60k purchase is still a selling point, but marginally small selling point.

> Should your political enemies be selectively prosecuted, though?

Obviously. How else they will understand that they should be your political allies and not the enemy?

Wouldn't that be amazing if Trump will be impeached for his 200 felonies and put in jail for the rest of his life? Along with all his allies who helped him to commit crimes and to avoid the responsibility. And the life sentence for Musk for treason and the other crimes he had committed.

And multi‑billion‑dollars fines for Zuck, Bezos, and others to show everybody that it is not okay to support the worst criminals alive just because they have won the election.

Not only that, he suggesting that it will magically works out, without any devastating consequences. You know, we just need to write a low that is going against the common sense, human nature, and the will of the gods, and that is how we will get a better society.

> Maybe the problem is that your ideas don't withstand any academic scrutiny

My ideas do withstand the reality. Unlike their so called "sound researches" or "well-reasoned arguments".

So negative karma? I was banned on several platforms simply for saying that all available to me evidences point out that covid was developed in the lab, while ALL the scientist licked the communist China's boots and said that it is SCIENTIFICALLY impossible. So what does the karma means in front of the truth?

> Still beats the alternative of corrupt career politicians.

Are you sure? After the covid and position of the scientific community on it's origin it is evident that most scientist are ready to do the exact things that corrupt career politicians are doing, but for free, purely for the love of the game.

That is true.

The problem is not in that they are divorced from the real world. The problem is in the model that science get financial support, which leads to the existence of filtering that eliminates from the science anyone who is not far-left loyal dog and supporter of the "current thing".

> No. Capitalism is supposed to be a rejection of this kind of central planning attitude

It is not. Capitalism allow you to have any attitude, and you totally can sit in an armchair and think around about how it would be grate if all the people give away their chips to you because that would be more effective.

The distinction in the action. Capitalism only allow you to outbuy an average 80 IQ call of duty enjoyer of their chips. Under socialism the same thought process lead to government decree that banns personal computers selling, and your average call of duty enjoyer will have two weak to send their old pc to Sam Altman to decide if there is in it any useful chips or not. Because Sam Altman decided that that is the more effective way to redistribute the chips, so obey or be ready to gulag, you dirty bourgeois pig.

> At scale, markets are not zero sum and failures sink all boats.

At scale, this boats sink somewhere, not disappeared into the void. And yeas, markets are not zero sum, amount of goods may increase and may decrease, and we should let agents that decrease them fail.

> Without the bailout there would be no more banks

> and a hundred million of people left on the ice

That is not true. There would be a lot of banks and people would have lost only part of their money.

Why? I think it is the most important thing. How can you get peak performance from the men, when they physiologically stop caring about all that important for capitalization stuff when they chasing the woman?

> how not getting enough trim in your younger years makes you especially vulnerable to these schemes once you acquire power and wealth?

I don't sure there is any connection. It is the same things regardless of your popularity in younger years.

That type of profession chooses you, not you chooses the profession.

Computers were introduced overnight. One Monday the engineer went to work, and bang! There is a computer waiting for him, deal with it or go find another job. People at that time not joked around, were too busy building affordable houses, medicine, education, groceries and childcare. No way they would put up with some snowflakes who has some "beliefs" get in the way of creating all that societal goods.

How would you possibly prove that AI is necessary for a job when someone has been doing the job successfully for years before AI?

Same for computers and engineering.

During the medieval period and the Renaissance you totally could do art that had nothing to do with church and royals. In the Soviet Union you could not.

There is a famous quote of the judge on the Brodsky trial (1964): "Who have appointed you to be a Poet?". Аfter he sad that Soviet Government did no appointed him to be a Poet, he was sent in the gulag for 5 years. That is how "art" worked in the USSR.

> So the right is incentivized to protect this industry even if it becomes obsolescent and is no longer the most economical or practical way to generate at least much of our energy needs (electricity).

I think in that case industries that will became most economical or practical way to generate electricity simply will start funding the right.

That is not how it works.

First, you for decades pay 5-10 times more for energy to subsidize every single green energy project... and then oopsie woopsie you still buy Russian gas and dependent on the evil coutries.

> But maybe we decide that boiling orphans isn't an industry we want as a society, and legislate consequences for doing so.

And in the same way we have decided that the screens for children IS an industry we want as a society.

Before there was Lenin, after there was Khrushchev, both explicitly considered art that is not pro-government communist propaganda as thing that should not exist.

> Soviet Union was one of last countries with true art.

There was no art, only pro-government communist propaganda. In Soviet Union there was even popular saying regardless culture, that Stalin took over a Russia of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, and left it with the Union of Soviet Writers.

> Hollywood got devalued because people prefer spending time on Youtube/TikTok/Instagram/Reddit/Discord/Video Games/Hacker News/etc.

Hollywood got devalued because it is spending more money than before to get worse results than before.

> By whom?

By the relatively small group of armed leftist activists ready to use violence until their goal would be achieved.