Josh has some of the worst political takes on the Internet. His website is fun, but he's a grade-a prick and thinks he is way smarter than he actually is. His "power" as a website admin is all he has and he clings to it like a life preserver.
Jersh is correct about debanking though. The banks should have no right to refuse to do legal business with any American citizen, that's the price the banks should pay for creating the system they did. Good job guys; you made your system integral to the American life, now it's a civil right that people can use it because it is basically necessary to use it to not be excluded from society. Like it or not, we live in an increasingly cashless country now and you really need the banking system to be able to participate in society. I'm not talking about going OTG living BaSeD schizomode uncle ted in the woods, I'm talking about having an American life; jobs, paychecks, mortgage, running a small business, etc. You don't get to claim BUT MUH FREEDUM OF ASSOCIATION when you've used your entrenched power and lobbying to make taking part in your system as necessary to taking part in modern society as wearing clothing, it doesn't matter if you don't like what they're doing while engaging in business with you. Phone carriers can't just refuse to sell you a phone line because you like to scream slurs at telemarketers, and banks shouldn't be able to refuse to process your money for socially unpalatable things either. That, and once they got bailed out for the fuckery that caused the great recession, they have essentially become taxpayer subsidized public institutions.
This has to do with the ridiculous regulations that have been imposed on cars over the past few decades.
You just cannot make and sell a simple mechanical artifact, because it's not efficient enough, it all has to be over engineered, complex, with real time fuel mixture calibration, inactive cylinders, and computer controlled, cause new emission requirements mandate a .05% increase of efficiency.
It basically eliminates all advances in material science, you could have lighter, stronger and more reliable engines that would basically run forever if they were allowed to be mechanically simpler.
Don't act like automakers aren't complicit in this too. They are nickle and diming the customer for every little feature and using the technology as an opportunity push subscriptions and over charging for repairs because they have made everything so complicated and specialized that you need to come to them if you want it fixed. There is a way to comply with regulations and respect right to repair, but they are not going to.
Auto manufacturers are not only complicit in it, they've pushed for it to be this way. They've been helping the government legislate their business to grow it. Cars have already peaked, we've had the long lasting and reliable, we've had the beautiful, we've had the ridiculously fast, we've had the incredibly efficient. We are solidly in the realm of diminishing returns in all things automotive, but if you keep lobbying legislation for ever tightening standards, more features, less tolerance of the old ways, you've given yourself reason to exist and keep selling incremental improvements
or gradually worsening products and given any potential new competition massive R&D and regulatory hurdles to clear.
Very curious to see if the European Union Army will become a thing in the near future.
European governments have been kvetching about their NATO target for decades, they aren't going to want to spend the amount necessary to make up for years of letting their defense capabilities atrophy because they could rely on USA world police.
