Outside of being money for criminals, there is some value for investors. For them, it is a way for their portfolios to get exposure to the booming criminal economy.
1,305 karma · joined January 5, 2013
It was surprisingly easy to build.
It's also just a half decent basic video/audio editing suite that works on the desktop.
It eventually works well enough that these companies are able to capture and divert the wages of hundreds of millions of workers. We end up with a dozen or so trillionaires and massive structural underemployment and unemployment.
That's it. If you can't make rent, you wouldn't really care if CloudFlare got hacked by an AI swarm every Monday.
The work product probably offends real software engineers in the way that a normal home cooked meal would offend a Michelin star chef. Yet, before last summer, these people never contemplated the ability to cook their own meals before. The fact that they can do this now is a very big deal.
Political power has always about who controls economic production, and the tools of economic production.
Compare this to Iraq wars I and II. In Desert Storm, the US and its allies operated a half dozen carrier groups and hundreds of ships in the gulf.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/hc34dk/map_of_all_...
In Gulf War II, the US had three carrier groups inside the gulf. In between wars, the US fifth fleet was unchallenged in those waters, with its headquarters at the massive naval complex in Bahrain.
In the last 4 months, they have completely evacuated the gulf. They have attempted to run the strait twice and left immediately. The naval base has been severely damaged, and their long range radars destroyed. Even if the radars were somehow restored, it is unclear they would have the munitions to defend their fleet or bases for longer than a few days/weeks.
It is impossible to overstate what a strategic disaster this has been for the US military. In their wildest dreams, Iran couldn't have imagined this situation unfolding the way it did.
That's because the US has kept the surface combatants far back from the Persian Gulf for the duration of the war.
As far as we know, they have attempted to run the strait twice and had to turn back because they were under sustained attack.
I assume these ships can defend themselves for some period of time, but eventually the munitions run out, and they become sitting ducks. There is a reason the US Navy fled the Persian Gulf on Feb 26 and has not returned since.
American taxpayers invest more public dollars per capita in healthcare than anyone in the world. This before a single cent is paid into the private insurance system. Through Medicare, Medicaid, VA and other public health programs, you pay about 40% more public dollars per-capita than the most socialist, gold plated single payer system anywhere else.
You are not only getting ripped off by your insurer, but you are getting ripped off a public system, which has more than enough money to provide every man, woman and child with a lifetime of world-class, free at the point of service universal healthcare.
Its really difficult to overstate the level of strategic defeat that has occurred here.