Canada Guy

MOS:96B2P - thanks. Removing 'Display Pointer Tails' brought my cursor back. Strange that it worked the first time I had this checked yes and then it didn't with the same settings. This did the trick though - appreciated.

My own preference at the moment is to build around the proportional representation democratic model we are familiar with in Europe.  Decisions tend to get taken reflecting a broad range of views and after thorough debate, rather than reflecting partisan ideologies.
 

I agree in that I don't see the west being able to totally replace the manufacturing output of China for quite awhile. However, we are already seeing displacement in certain things back to the west. You mentioned the chips which is pretty high profile (intel started up two big factories in the US two years ago), but I think we will see the cheap stuff be the majority in the short term, then the heavy stuff, and lastly the tech stuff.
I say this because where my folks live in the upper midwest a Ramen noodle factory got built last year. It replaced the one they had in China. The labor costs there have increased significantly over the last ten years, supply chain issues, and cost of shipping all come together to the point that it is now cheaper to make it here stateside. This will probably become more and more of a trend due to pricing and others have said that China and Xi have become harder and harder to work with as well. 
With the heavy industry I expect it will shift back to the west as a lot of that was sourced out of Russia (pig iron, steel, aluminum, etc). The same factors of labor, shipping, politics, and supply chain issues apply to China sourcing. Mexico has been industrializing the past 10-20 years and might be able to absorb a lot of the manufacturing not to mention South East Asia. South America also has a lot of potential. India? So it isn't that China is irreplaceable, it just isn't replaceable in the short term. Give the rest of the world 10 years and a lot of what has made China important could be shifted to other sources. 

No, the real “mistake” was made years before that when Ho Chi Minh met with FDR during WWII and asked for arms to drive the Japanese out of Occupied French Indochina. As I understand it, FDR had him given five Colt 1911A1 .45 caliber pistols because he knew any arms he sent to Ho would be used to drive out “our buddies” the French after the war. It was at that time that Ho turned to Stalin. The people of Indochina had, just 100 years earlier, driven out the Chinese after being occupied by them for 500 years. Talk about “those who fail to learn from history is doomed to repeat it.” In my humble opinion, the U.S./VietNam war resulted from the U.S. wanting to help France retain it’s colony, and a corrupt South VietNam Government refusing to comply with the negotiated agreement to hold free elections in both countries. The North did, and the South refused.
Side Note: The USA was the first Country to recognize the Sovereignty of North VietNam.when they were partitioned.

It does seem like they started out with a decent surplus of young men though, so maybe this just balances the demographics.
I think I once read there's a theory that says if there are many more young men than young women, then that's a recipe for war.

I place more of the blame on the monied lobbyists who represent the companies/unions/special interests who own the legislators.  Nothing happens without their input up to and including the crafting of bills.  They have far more influence than any voting block. Most of the general public has no idea what any single piece of legislation contains, unless some PR group representing even more money tells them what is in the bill and how they should feel about it.

Oh we still have the good old german grammatical option to use "zusammengesetzte Substantive", which gives us way more than 26 options and could result in things like this:
Deutsche Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftswirtschaftsprüfungsinspektion
German Danube Steamship Company Economic Audit Inspectorate
🙃

Are we going to see this reflected in future games? artillery has a very charming life. In house rules we could permit short missions to consider repositioning. Happy gaming to everyone, I follow everything game related. Belated apologies for my previous posts. 

I do believe CMBB players will recognise this.
 

Of course capitalism "works" but it doesn't work in a way that is useful for society. A good economical system converts greed into productivity. This never actually worked reliably but since WW2 capitalism managed to sell the narrative that it does. Work hard and you will get rich or at least have enough money for a good life. We were fed the stories of people with good ideas who worked hard and became millionaires. We weren't told about survivor bias and that those people ultimate were just those who got lucky. At least up to a decade or two ago it was good enough that a large middle class was created, mostly in the western democracies.
But in the end capitalism is not about hard work, it is, as the name implies, about capital. Which ultimately means making money by having money. And that only works with interests. You lend someone money and expect to get back more than you gave him. Since that is what our whole economy is about we need perpetual growth (because otherwise you can't pay interests). And it is not about hard work. You very rarely get rich by working hard. But if you have money, you very reliably get more money. That is the opposite of converting greed to productivity.
Now, about the middle class: We currently ser a decline of the middle class in many western countries. That's because it was kind of an accident that got corrected by globalization. The middle class are well educated people whom companies needed to produce their ever more complicated products and who thus made the money to actually buy them. Nowadays we have cheap but well educated people in far off countries and still some middle class here to buy stuff but which often largely exists because countries subsidize companies to stay in the country, often making debts in the process. But since one person's debts are another person's capital that model, for now, works even better.
But once AI and automation make the vast majority of jobs vanish (and that will happen!) plus climate change showing us that perpetual growth on a finite planet can't work this whole system is in serious trouble.

The Early War Orphans PBEM Club is now open. 

 

I could recommend you some reading on that lol. While what you're saying is sensible, the things you're advocating for that would keep the system going, are not the direction folks in charge have been going in either the government or industry. Been this way since Thatcher...
 
 
 
 
 

Who thinks this?  Capitalism works, overall.  It just needs some boundaries and people need some safety net.  We can (and should) argue about where the right balance is, but what do people think will replace capitalism?  State run economies are baaaaaad at running..... a state economy 🤪.   The free market, which sometimes actually exists, works -- meaning it only exists when there's the much req'd proper competition, lest things devolve rather quickly into trusts & monopolies. 
 

The term we always see for this is "a rising tide lifts all boats".  But only for those w boats.

I'm glad you read the articles and found them enlightening. 😃And I agree, elites don't care about economic issues except to benefit themselves as a class. 
You'll find that the only thing I disagree  with you on is  the framing, and that's not your fault. The elites you're referring to who are screaming at the top of their lungs are liberals,not leftists. Like the right wing, they have chosen to frame thing in terms of a culture war and, more critically, ignore the economic dimensions of these social struggles( climate, race, gender often ARE big economic issues for the people affected, and we all are affected by them, wether benefiting or being harmed). 
You'll ironically find that the only thing that socialists, anarchists, communists dislike more than the right wing is the liberals. They co-opt social movements asking for meaningful change and make them safe for corporate commodification, and harmless to the status quo.  They signal support for tepid reforms and first capture, then strangle the momentum of any drift that makes their alliance with their more conservative elite colleagues too uncomfortable- and if you think they're truly opposed to each other, see how quick the Dems and 'the most pro union president in US history' joined republicans in opposing rail workers two months ago. I'm sure the tragedy in Ohio recently is a direct result of that one btw.
These liberals openly join their conservative colleagues to oppose economic justice, then have the gall to take on the mantle of 'the left' while suppressing the actual left from the mainstream conversation! They have successfully kept us out and at the margins since the 1950's in the US for example.  
Anyhow, outside of the opening you gave in your response there,  I will keep my politics at a minimum except where relevant to the discussion on the war.  Glad I can participate and add useful perspectives. 

Bizarro world for sure.  I think the simple black & whiteness of this war, so very rare, makes it an easy choice even for folks that are generally skeptical of military involvements.  I was pro-afghan war and anti-iraq war but those were way more complicated than UKR war.  "do I want saddam dead? -- yes!  Are we lying about WMDs and potentially getting into a big disaster? -- yes!"  No dilemnas like that in this one.
I am completely flummoxed on how a big portion of those usually aggressive in foreign policy are now siding w a serial mass murdering, city destroying, world economy wrecking psychopath dictator.  I keep thinking there's some Putin payola underneath all the brainwashing going on, but that's just conjecture.  

I would be willing to vet people within the community and submit actual feedback and data in an organized effort to beta test and compare the tradeoffs. 

Too bad you can’t Kickstarter feature requests a la cart. E.g.
Replay feature $20,000.00
BAOR $5,000.00
BOAR Space Lobsters $20,000.00
Sewer Movement $2.00
😝
EDIT: Actually… I’d back the Space Lobsters!

I love CM as much as the next person here, but you DO realise there are ... issues with CM's morale model, right? And that this is one of them?

Tired of this both sides nonsense. The sickness comes from one network, one party. One party is pushing Putin propaganda, one party tried to overthrow the government. It wasn't CNN, it wasn't the Democrats.

Unless you’re in Saskatchewan of course (almost all fossil fuel power and more snow than you can handle)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/resurfaced-video-ukraines-zelenskyy-spoof-034106999.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABOstI7wutPrUvKoo7xW1QYOWr5ha2212sIzAMBZpIZP_XUqYGHnuIjhLuUW0X0MgkkC1NR8dto-QkPmm9XqV8BLV3nSMyGAQJY_-5IEyrkhCZv3VpFiRuS_afmNqRSoK5KuTqvOQjT7ptIxW64ssiVnQigaJFUWF23SVmC0vOWF
On a happier note, since it is almost Christmas, this is a clip from the TV show that made him President.Which he pretty much wrote, produced starred in, and so on. He has been thinking about, and pushing for Ukraine in the EU for a LONG time.

Oh for the win, for sure. 
Use of Weapons. The Player of Games. Against A Dark Background. Excession. Any of those Characters and worlds are orders of magnitude more thought out and developed than 3BP and its paper thin,  exposition spouting, laughably gender-biased nitwit-
I should stop. 
I stop. 

Or pretty much every significant character in Iain M. Banks. 

Weather would be my savior where I live right now.   I woke up to a rather brisk -32C this morning and it is only early December.   Best of luck sending a drone my way other than by courier or mail.  😁