wildncrazyguy138

There goes Donald Quixote riding El Russia and tilting at windmills again.

The devil went down to Georgia and he was lookin for a judge to appeal.

Nah, I’m too environmentally focused to be a car salesman, would rather people take public transit or bike when possible.

But I have lived the Internet era and I’ve seen the promised utopia facade unmasked. Much of the Internet is a marketplace. Most people want to interact with a thing before they buy it (or return it after), but they want the utility of a brick and mortar at online-only prices. Until we have some Second-life metaverse where digital things from a manufacturer feel absolutely real, the world is going to need salespeople to mind the gap. And those salespeople deserve to eat too.

In the age of the internet, where a manufacturer could sell direct to consumer, it seems it would make little sense to have resellers and that was the idea in the 90s when the Internet was in it’s infancy. But the hard truth is that selling is hard. You can bring a great product to market and yet it can still flop.

This is precisely why Alibaba is such a successful platform. It gives manufacturers, who specialize in making things, a marketplace and a sales process at a fraction of the cost of building out a whole sales team.

But, as anyone who has tried to sell their used items on Facebook likely has seen, consumers are fickle and the sales process can take an inordinate amount of time. For many, the time invested simply isn’t worth the effort.

And so, in the age where anyone can make a purchase instantly with the click of a button, we’re back to having middlemen. But if we’re going to have them, then we need to incentivize them. And just like for anyone else, the rules should be stable and fair enough to foster a healthy and innovative market.

Alright guys, where are the Q-anon like conspiracy theories on how DT is locked in some corpo-state dungeon under a drug store in Toomer’s corner while Elon, Bezos, et al. have replaced him with an AI-like puppet?

Cuz y’all need to get in on this quick while the gettin’s good.

Meh supply chain, I did that before. Masking and isolation worked well enough. I do feel for the medical workers though. Too many of them didn’t have safe options last time around.

I mean, yeah I guess, but the majority of us will isolate and mask up. Sooooo 🤷‍♂️

It’s the fiscally liberal but socially conservative strategy. Produce a coalition of christofascists, conservative leaning unions, religious minded immigrants, the subset of naturalized immigrants who want to pull the ladder up behind them, socially conservative elites, and low SES voters.

And he’s right, that combination is a powerhouse of voters that would give them the south, the mountain west and most of the midwest. It leaves out a class that could easily be pigeonholed as “elites” in the big cities on the coasts - and would align our political structure more like Turkey or India’s.

In other words, DT peeled off a layer of disenfranchized democratic voters that were ripe for the taking, Bannon wants to build a strategy that keeps them.

deleted by creator

He sounds like, looks like, and acts like a character out of Resident Evil.

Capitalism has served me well and, I think if you have a particularly strong work ethic, then the American model can serve you well, up to a certain extent.

BUT, I am not a sycophant. I have seen the dark underbelly of the American model, how certain vampires at the top of companies will maximize profits at the expense of literally everything else - contractually locking in customers and then raising rates on them to the point where they can barely afford it (they’d call that “equilibrium “). Firing good long-time employees because new fresh blood is cheaper, damned if it makes everyone else’s life harder, including that person who gave their life to the company. Predating on the meek, desperate, or just those who don’t think like them, in spite of what it may do to the relationship long term (fuck any sort of commitment or customer relationship at all because it can’t accurately be monetized).

These people chase money above all else. They’re loot dragons. The only relationships they have are those that either think like them or those they can manipulate and control.

So no, don’t chase the American model, but perhaps borrow from some of its most useful tenets. There are good motivated people in the flesh, but the structure is rotten at its core.

Bone apple tea!

Hmm, how do I say this without getting downvoted all to hell?

I think this is actually a decent pick. Rubio is fairly moderate for a Republican. His parents emigrated from Cuba, so he likely has at least some respect for the blight of immigrants. He presents well intentioned and intelligent. He’ll probably actually read his briefings.

Secretary of State had formerly been a springboard for higher office. Perhaps he would actually bring a smidge of sanity back to the GOP. This country deserves functional bipartisanship.

Probably not, but one could hope.

This is exactly how I found out my refrigerator was running.

Not so fast. David Duke was saying the quiet part out loud and he was only a fringe candidate. There’s something else going on here, I don’t know what it is exactly, that makes Trump more marketable.

The only things I can think of is that he has had decades in the public eye, and he’s been presented as smart and successful for most of that time. And bizarrely enough, he reflects a bygone era in America where blue collar union guys had pensions, which were blown away by billionaires like him. And yet, this billionaire known for grift and stiffing his workers, somehow became their champion.

The whole process has opened my eyes to just how much marketing works with a certain demographic.

Democracy Dies in Darkness indeed.

Projection. Remember during the first few days of the war when Russia issued a statement saying that the era of the West was over?

Everybody shamed Joe Manchin (and rightly so for holding up the green new deal), but that MF was one of the reasons the dems had 51.

There are so few progressive states that, if the dems are going to ever win the Senate and be able to confirm judges, they are going to have to hold space for progressive and moderate dems alike.

Now, there is some silver lining this year. There’s an independent in Nebraska who is neck and neck with the GOP incumbent there. This person is pro union but with some socially conservative values. If elected, he will likely vote sometimes with the dems and sometimes with the GOP, essentially being a spoiler for both, but probably to the great advantage of Nebraska.

I think this person should be celebrated and encouraged. We need more people who see country over party in politics.

Serious questions here. The world, by design, has arid zones around the tropics. If we heat up the planet, does that mean deserts pop up in other places? Like, will the Sahara and Cape Town turn green, but Spain and Italy and Argentina turn to desert? And if that’s the case, will hurricanes more often frequent New England, but less frequent Florida? Also, isn’t one of the major reasons we have hurricanes in the first place due to Sahara seeding them? If less desert then…?

Please keep the October surprises coming.