dventimi

I don't know how many people there are who won't take care of public property, but whatever it is I doubt it's 1 in 3.

I haven't used Lyft in awhile but as an Uber rider what I can tell you is, if that company has a similar policy, it hasn't worked for me. The quality and cleanliness of the vehicle, and the quality of the driving, has been vastly inferior for me in San Francisco than Waymo has been.

I do. It'll be easier to keep the fleet on a cleaning schedule, and won't be left to the whims of individuals.

Because they're mostly a vast array of reference docs with just one simple tutorial that barely scratches the surface?

https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php

Perhaps some of the people who get into this thought of it (mistakenly) as a job specialization that doesn't have a power-law distribution in income, such as a dentist or a software engineer.

Which is pathetic because almost certainly this person is neither wealthy nor powerful.

Again with the made up quotes. No one in this thread has said, "if it wasn't for the US, these people would be living in a democracy."

Anyway, you don't know that these are the only two options. You don't know that the USSR would've installed dictators like the US actually did, though I consider it unlikely as there's no evidence they even tried.

> It's not an internal conflict if the USSR is already supporting one side, is it?

Yes, it's still an internal political conflict.

> Sorry, but "which I believe it did" holds no weight with me.

Suit yourself. I'm not trying to persuade you.

> When the elected leader is already violating the constitution, it's no longer a democracy, is it?

No, it's still a democracy. In America, the Right believes President Obama violated the Constitution and the Left believes Trump did the same, yet few on either side would claim America ceased to be a democracy.

> You're going to need a source for that.

It supported a coup in 1970: https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/chile/index.html#5

> Are you suggesting the USSR would support a democracy?

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm stating two facts. First, you don't know what the USSR would've done. Second, in both Guatemala and Chile the US did support dictatorships.

> Do they have a track record that demonstrates that? I haven't seen it.

Have you seen a track record of the US supporting democracy? Not in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Haiti, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, you haven't.

It sounds like you want more than what typical Scandinavians have. Put another way, it sounds like you want income inequality, with you on the winning side.

Nobody in America works harder than the poor.

I'm with you every step of the way up until the cracks about intellectual capability. I'm not persuaded that knowledge economies like California and New York have a higher concentration of intellectual capability than boring Iowa or Virginia. Not until we've ruled out other factors, like elitism, would I be willing to entertain the theory of intellectual sorting.

> So the US should sit back as the USSR does it?

Do what exactly?

> Is it wrong for the US to support on side of a conflict?

That's a question of morality. A question of personal preference is, "Would you prefer the US not support a side in an internal political conflict in another country?" to which I would answer, "Yes. I would prefer the US not support a side in an internal political conflict, just as I would prefer the other countries not support a side in an internal political conflict in the US." A question of fact is, "Was the US allowed to support a side in these conflicts." The answer is "no."

> That's not the same as supporting a coup. It's literally the CIAs job to collect intelligence, no?

No, it's not the CIA's job to share intelligence with the plotters, which I believe it did. It's also not the CIA's job to supply the plotters with weapons and encourage them to commit a coup as they did in 1970, something to which I don't have to resort to believe because the CIA itself says that it did do those things. It goes on to say that its support of a coup in 1970 probably led the 1973 plotters to believe they had the CIA's blessing.

> Read up on the conflict. Allende was refusing to follow the constitution. It's not like Chile was some stable democracy, it was teetering on authoritarianism.

Read up on basic logic, and while you're at it, read up on basic physics. If Chile was "teetering on the authoritarianism" then evidently it hadn't yet succumbed to authoritarianism. The coup plotters didn't have the ability to see into the future, like the precogs in "Minority Report." Moreover, again even if the plotters said why they did it, that doesn't mean we know why they did it.

> The US wasn't doing that it. It was monitoring the situation and never got involved.

Tell that to the CIA, which wrote in 2000 that it did get involved in the Chilean coup (for instance).

> It absolutely is a fact

"far from democratic" is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact.

> Calling it "overthrowing a democracy" is inaccurate

Who has called it "overthrowing a democracy"? Who are you quoting? It can't be me because I never said that. Although...I would if you asked me my opinion on the subject.

> they were highly unstable governments teetering on chaos

That's debatable, but even so, again if they were "teetering on the edge" of chaos then evidently they hadn't yet lapsed into chaos. No one can predict the future, not even you in 2024 and not even US politicians in 1954 or in 1973.

> So again, I raise my original point - the alternative isn't a democracy and stability, it's chaos

That's not a point. That's an opinion (yours).

> The US can stand back and let the USSR fund the opposition and end up with a dictatorship. Is that a better outcome than the US getting involved?

The USSR funding the one side in a political conflict was every bit as legal as the US funding the other side in a political conflict. That that would end up with a USSR-favored dictatorship is theoretical because it didn't happen. What did happen was that they ended up with US-favored dictatorships after the coups. So my personal opinion is that yes, it would've been a better decision in 1954 or 1973 to stop short of supporting those coups, and allow the USSR to continue to wield its influence.

> The Arbez coup was an attempt to prevent the USDR from gaining a foothold there. [sic]

Rubbish, but even if it were true, so what? Who gave the US the right to decide what happens in other nations?

> The Brother Sam operation didn’t even happen the operation was thus deactivated

If it was deactivated, then it sounds like it happened. You can't deactivate something that hasn't already been activated. The fact is that it did happen. Oh, sure, the supplies weren't delivered and the land invasion was never launched, but the ships did leave port. Moreover, can you be certain that word of this operation wasn't sent to the Brazilian opposition to reassure them an give them confidence? All of which is moot, of course, because what I wrote earlier was, "[to] Not support coups d'etat against democratically-elected leaders [was an alternative]". Whether or not it had "physical effect"--whatever that is--this was clearly support.

> The Chilean coup happened before the CIA actually got involved

I would suggest doing some research on those and reading further into Wikipedia. Right there after the first paragraph in that section, the article quotes the 2000 report which says, "[The CIA] had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters" (among other things), which again constitutes "support."

> regardless that coup was done because Allende refused to follow the Supreme Court

Only the coup plotters know why the conducted a coup and I'm not convinced they've told you. But if it was because "the Supreme Court public complained" well Heavens to Betsy! Oh no! The Supreme Court "complained" did it? Well now, that is serious. That definitely automatically grants the U.S. the right to decide the matter.

Please.

> So using the “democratically elected” hides the fact the situation was far from democratic at the time of the coup.

That's not a fact. That's a matter of judgement (yours). That Arbenz and Allende at least won elections which were generally regarded as fair, those are matters of fact.

I was looking at companies like those described here, some of whom went from rapid growth straight to the the rubbish bin.

https://fortune.com/longform/failed-unicorn-startups-billion...

Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: companies held aloft on a cushion of easy money, untethered to market forces, free to pay arbitrary salaries to people easily outcompeting their neighbors who aren't so blessed.

As I said, I could be mistaken and I'm willing to defer to your expertise. What I'm trying to understand is this. Is it possible for a company--say a tech unicorn--to have a high gross margin and a low COGS, and yet pay some of its employees--maybe engineers in R&D--astronomical compensation that somehow isn't reflected in the gross margin and/or COGS? While we're at it, is it further possible for such a company to have a high gross profit margin and yet fail to make a profit? I ask because I'm trying to square the claim about the high gross margins and I guess efficiency of San Francisco tech companies, with reports in the popular press about tech unicorns like Twitter and Pinterest losing money quarter after quarter.

> what was a good alternative?

Not support coups d'etat against democratically-elected leaders?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Brother_Sam#Developi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Testify

I'm sure this is just a coincidence:

https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2024/01/04/califor...

As someone who isn't in law, medicine, or finance but must from time to time pay for legal services, medical care, and financial advice, I'm not happy there are lawyers, finance people, and doctors who make $500k. I'm doubly not happy when I have to compete with those people for housing and other goods and services.

I don't know about that. If a tech company categorizes its software engineers as R&D, my understanding (which could be flawed) is that typically would be CapEx but not COGS. In that case, high engineering salaries wouldn't be reflected there. That would help resolve the puzzle when tech companies have a high gross margin but a low or negative net margin, as many Bay Area unicorns did, for example.

What refreshing candor!

Was Uribe center-left or far-right? It seems like was both at different times. In any case, viewed by this outsider from thousands of miles away, Colombian politics looks fluid enough that labels lose distinction. The one constant seems to be U.S. policy.

I'm willing to accept a lot of the blame, but that stops at the border. I may not have much political influence in America where I live, but I'm pretty sure I have no political influence in Russia.

> There's not really anything the average person can do to influence this policy, so by saying "of every American", the blame is diluted across the population, instead of held directly against those responsible.

Assign for yourself whatever share of the blame your conscience will allow.

> So what is the answer?

I have no idea, but whatever it is I suspect it's not yelling at strangers on the internet.

Honestly, I was confused by that myself.

> when they say anti-leftist it feels like a justification

I wrote "anti-leftist" to be descriptive, not normative. If it wasn't clear, I aim to criticize American policy, not to praise it.

Take a guess.

Yes. That's why I wrote, "Through at least two administrations". Personally, I consider the scale of injustice in Latin America alone at the hands of U.S. policy to be vast and unsparing in the culpability it lays at the feet of every American. I recognize that not everyone will be joining me out on that limb, however, so I chose to make my opening bid smaller but more unassailable.

Are there anti-leftist militarists in Colombia who are centrist?

> "Paramilitary organizations have very close ties with the far-right politicians here."

Does that make it more likely those paramilitary organizations are on the left, or on the right?