More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
More efficient manufacturing, falling battery costs and intense competition are lowering sticker prices for battery-powered models to within striking distance of gasoline cars.
…and I couldn’t be happier about it. The age of American/European imperialism is coming to an end after centuries of suffering imposed on poorer nations. Not that I have high hopes for China or anything, but it’s HARD to do worse than US or Western Europe…
If you think its hard to do worse, you haven been paying attention to China
Yeah I mean china is a shithole country but for some reason there is a narrative on Lemmy that it is this great place while in reality it barely holds together as this silver taped weird capitalistic corrupted monster
There is a reason Chinese gov is so shy about Taiwan and all the happenings Russia vs eu because they know damn well they are holding stability barely together and one wrong move would plunge it into chaos. They can’t afford ANY conflict. It all barely functions as it is due to aggressive capitalism and corruption
I know, their personal space station, Tiengong, is still only a third of the size of the one we share with other countries. The poor thing can barely manage a trade surplus of 230 billion with the US. And look who they count on for innovation in green energy… china, of all countries!
Ok, American exceptionalist. The legacy of ashes of the US is so far from whatever admittedly bad policy China has had, that even comparing both is ridiculous. In the future, the US will be gazed upon the same way we gaze upon nazi Germany right now. More than a million deaths and millions of lives ruined in the inhumane bombings of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Korea, hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of lives ruined from outright invasion of countries such as Iraq, supporting radical terrorist guerrillas all over the world such as in Afghanistan or Libya, destabilizing and organising coups against democratically elected leaders in countries like Chile (Allende) and Iran (Mosaddegh), banana republics in central America such as in Guatemala, support of fascist dictatorships like that of Pinochet or of Franco, constant militarism and refusing to lower military expenditure in the face of nuclear war against the USSR, sending nuclear missiles to Turkey and refusing to act upon even unilateral attempts during the Gorbachyov era to cool down the cold war… The list is absolutely ENDLESS, I haven’t even mentioned a quarter of all the examples that come to mind. China simply doesn’t have that history. Believing that the US isn’t doing worse than China means you’re absolutely blind to US and western European imperialism (I could bring equal lists of humanitarian crises started by UK, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium).
Do you think we Americans are ok with that? Life in this country is complicated in its own ways.
I know it’s not the fault of American citizens, hence I didn’t accuse them. Talking about American imperialism isn’t saying “American citizens suck”, I’m European myself and I’m fully aware of the actions of my government and the EU. The fact that I’m looking forwards to the end of western imperialism doesn’t mean I wish any evil on the citizens of the west since they’re not to blame for this system. I’m just saying it’s hard to beat US and European imperialism in being evil.
I appreciate the clarification.
We’ll do the best we can against an extremely well funded and entrenched oligarchy, controlling what we read/see/hear as effectively as possible. Places like Lemmy are sort of a weakness in their systems.
We Americans also have ourselves to look at, as animals it is hard to invite change when our basic needs are mostly met, e.g. our toilets work and we can buy food. We can do better, but it’s a bit like climbing the walls of the maze vs running around within.
Again, I don’t blame the general populace. What you say of “Americans have ourselves to look at”, it’s not that easy. These things don’t happen in a vacuum, the context of Americans and Europeans (and Canadians and Aussies and even Russians) not looking inwards and realising imperialism, isn’t a consequence of lack of self-awareness that these countries have and the rest don’t. It’s just a consequence of the system we happen to live in, which propagandizes certain points of view, talking points, and controls media to serve the interests of capital. It’s hardly useful IMO to blame the majority for issues that could be solved “simply” by changing the ownership structure of media outlets, for example.
Group buy-in is generally a foundational requirement for future changes…
Idk what you mean by “group buy-in”, sorry, maybe it’s an idiom I’m not picking, I’m not a native speaker.
If you mean that people generally should believe in the change for the change to happen, then yes, I agree that’s a great starting point. That’s why we leftists organise, and try to create resilient communities that care for those around us, in order to make people have better lives and be more aware of the oppression they’re suffering, and when the material conditions are appropriate, to be there.
This is always the problem: extremists want to end something but have no idea what will replace what they want to eradicate. It won’t become better by itself. People take the good things we have for granted, focus their attention on the bad things without trying to solve them, and think that it’ll somehow become better if we destroy everything. It won’t. It’s not hard to do worse than we’re doing right now; it’s incredibly easy. What is truly hard is doing better. That’s why extremists are focused on destruction and not improvement.
Yeah, America is undermining it’s own hegemony since 2016 and what do you know? The threat of violence is rising.
Russia invaded Ukraine, China is threatening Taiwan, Ethiopia is threatening Eritrea, Venezuela is threatening Guyana. A world where large nations can bully, invade, and occupy small nations unopposed is not really better than the Pax Americana.
Exactly. People jump into discussions about how bad our world is, but they don’t seem to know how bad it was 100, 200, or 300 years ago. And then they offer communism as the solution - the same communism that resulted in bloodshed everywhere it has been applied. It’s sad to see people turn to solutions that are proven to be bad due to a lack of education and ignorance, instead of working on something that could really help. Such a waste of effort.
God forbid we criticise the system for its failures.
Yeah, mate, it’s so hard not murdering millions of people in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Iraq. They just die by themselves when the bombs happen to drop on them, so unfortunate.
Saying that things are difficult is actually an excuse for inaction and lukewarm reformism, as has been shown over the past decades with the Palestine occupation by Israel for example. The whole “it’s so difficult” framework exposed in western media led to public opinion not being swayed one way or the other. Now, with the advent of social media and the access to international media of all ideologies, people clearly see there’s a settler genocidal state bombing another. It’s easy: stop the fucking bombings, and stop the settling, and stop the blockade on Gaza. It’s not hard not bombing people, it actually costs a lot of money.
If you want constructive solutions I’ll give you constructive solutions. Abolish unemployment by creating public employment. Abolish exploitation of the working classes by expropriating the means of production. Abolish homelessness and solve the housing crisis by building prefab housing on a nationwide scale. Stop bombing developing countries. All things I’m saying have been achieved by poorer nations 50+ years ago, it can be done and it’s absolutely realistic.
Now, what do you propose?
Yes.
Most Americans are perfectly fine with it as long as their cell phone works and there’s food on the table.
The number of us that are horrified by what America’s done to get where it is is vanishingly small.
Almost half of this country is about to vote for a racist tyrannical idiot because he says the quiet part loud. A sizable number of people aren’t committed to voting against the Cheeto tyrant. And a number of the people that are committed to voting against him aren’t all that upset about the atrocities committed in their name, for shit as stupid as access to fucking tropical fruit.
I don’t agree.
Unfortunately, you’re a perfect example of the success of messaging being broadcast directly to deflate the sense of power and ability we all have, in spite of the walls confining us for tropical fruit.
Follow your thoughts to their conclusion, as designed: we’ve broken too much, and they’re too powerful, there’s nothing we can do.
It’s not true.
Sadly your vague platitudes disagree with reality and don’t directly respond to anything I said.
Pitiful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfla1
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Please, actually read my comment, and tell me how I’m celebrating Chinese imperialism by saying it’s hard to do as bad as western imperialism.
You guys throw the word “tankie” around to anyone remotely skeptical of American imperialism and have the balls to call yourself leftists… Shameful
Fair I retract my statement, but to be fair you do still come across as unconditionally celebrating the collapse of American domination without consideration of what replaces it.
American and Western domination of the world needs to stop but the culture in those places is a lot closer to realizing that and affecting change compared to China doing the same. Let it collapse from within not because a different emperor takes the throne.
Sure, the culture in Europe and America is just about to topple imperialism from within, that’s why we’re assisting to a process of radicalization towards the extreme right wing in all the western world. You have a half of the US voting for a rapist, racist felon (the other alternative being Genocide Joe). You have increasing extreme right wing in Europe, with Melon winning the elections, LePen getting high results, and growing extreme right wing parties such as Vox or AFD.
Imperialism isn’t something imposed by the people, it’s imposed by the elites. It’s a mechanism of elites to perpetuate and increase their power and wealth. It’s not an unintended consequence of capitalism, it’s its very nature. And sadly those elites won’t give up their power without extreme events taking place, look at countries that had revolutions and removed those elites such as the USSR or Cuba, and the conditions in which these revolutions happened. The empire won’t fall from within until the conditions aren’t right, and the conditions could, for example, be a decrease in power over the globe thanks to the elimination of a unique US-Europe hegemony in the globe to be substituted by something else, whatever it is. It’s not gonna be pretty, but reality right now isn’t pretty to most of human population.
Yes and my point is that a revolution within the US whether violent or otherwise is the proper path towards replacing American imperialism. China isn’t coming in to save us and they’re further behind in achieving those goals from within. The United States is not yet as bad as China in terms of enforcing monoculture and limiting radical ideas.
Everyone knows that if the Good Democracy Imperialism of America goes down, the Bad Authoritarian Imperialism of China goes up. Only a Good Guy With Imperialism can stop a Bad Guy With Imperialism. Its called the White Man’s Burden, sweetie. We’re the only ones who can stem the tide of the savage hordes.
This is a stupid reductive parody of my point which is that with all its faults the US is closer to a radical change than China is. I’m interested in “workers of the world unite” not just “i want to be under new management”
Do you think China is closer than the US to a post-national egalitarian society?
Western Chauvinism is one hell of a drug.
Pick your metric. Gini Index? Purchasing Parity? Household debt? Home ownership rate? Union membership? Democratic participation rate? Waste per capita?
There are countries higher than China on all of these measures. But the US can’t come out ahead on a single one.
how about being OK with other cultures? how about letting mosques exist?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park51
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Xi'an#Modern_usage
How do you think the US would respond to a population of 25M Muslims? We can’t even stomach Deerborne, Michigan.
Xi is gonna drain the swamp