absGeekNZ

But the Ploopy mouse already exists.

Same in NZ, but they get pretty insistent once you have accrued more than 8 weeks (2 years worth).

Expect rather than names, just put down a list of head line policies.

How?

I'm in NZ, we have a whole bunch of politicians to choose from, and it always comes down to who is the least likely to fuck things up beyond repair. It is not often that an objectively good candidate, everyone has their flaws.

In this example the question is not is Harris an objectively good candidate, but is she objectively better than Trump?

In my opinion yes, yes she is! Trump is the worst, the way he has emboldened the far right world wide is truly terrible.

Generational shifts happen slowly and in full view. You can act accordingly, this is a process that lasts decades.

COVID happened in months, spread like wildfire and put a huge strain on healthcare systems worldwide. No amount of money thrown at the system would have increased capacity.

What would count as real proof, if not prices falling due to competition?

That is the problem I was referring to in my original post, "economics is a very murky science", I come from an engineering and physical sciences point of view. Good economic data is hard to come by, it is always contaminated with chaotic factors that cannot be controlled for. "Proof" may not be possible in economic science.

Why would it not be true?

Because from a logical point of view, there is no necessity to go from socialism to communism. A country could easily decide that socialism is where they wan to stay. When something is necessarily true, not only does it always happen it must happen. That is the point I was trying to make, there is nothing fundamental about socialism forcing that transition from socialism to communism.

Again, this has nothing to do with Socialism or Communism.

I have to disagree with you there, in a capitalist system the burden of care falls on the individual (see the American health care system), whereas in socialism and communism, that burden falls on the state. This is a key economic factor, I'm from NZ and the social healthcare system is really awesome, but as with everything we can see how it could be better.

The system has a capacity, if you want to increase that capacity you have to have the resources to do that. If your population is not growing (stable is not enough) then your health care system is always in danger of not having enough resource. The problem is that the system always need to grow, as we get better at improving the lives of people and increasing lifespan the burden from the elderly increases. The resources used to care for the elderly are finite and use up system capacity.

Even in a capitalist society the system has capacity limits, there is no amount of money that you can throw at it to increase your number of doctors tomorrow. You have X doctors today, this is not easily increased beyond the natural rate (X+new doctors-retiring doctors), all you can do is move the existing ones around.

You can use this argument for a lot of major points of expenditure; education, welfare, transport etc....but healthcare is starkly different between the different economic models.

While I appreciate that Marx made a case, this is not data or evidence. It seems intuitively true, but that doesn't really move you closer to real proof.

Essentially, competition forces prices lower, and automation and increased production lower the price floor. Automation is pursued because it temporarily allows you to outcompete, until other firms can produce at the same price, forcing prices to match at a new floor. This continues.

I'm not sure if you are trying to imply automation is a good or bad thing. Looking through history, the industrial revolution was bad for the workers of the time, but in the long run massively improved the living standards of everyone. Automation is a net good in my opinion. Competition is simply an accelerator, this is not really tied to the economic system being used. In capitalist or communist systems, firms that are protected from competition (by what ever means) do not innovate as fast or as effectively (see Intel as a great example of this).

Socialism is just the precursor to Communism.

While this can be true, it is not necessarily true.

I don’t see what birth rates have to do with anything.

As your population ages, the costs to care for them raise at an increasing rate. If you don't have enough new workers to stabilize the economic base, the burden that an aging population places on the younger generation grows until it becomes untenable.

That is an interesting argument, but where is the proof? Economics is a very murky "science" as it is, a broad statement such as "capitalism is inherently unstable" needs some healthy data backing it up.

The same argument could be made about communism, as an economic system it doesn't have the best track record.

Socialism seems to have a pretty good track record. But even in socialism there are issues, especially around ensuring a steady supply of kids coming through, once population starts falling the cracks start appearing.

This made me think of Jordan Peterson....some of his early stuff on actual psychology was interesting and informative.....then there is all the other stuff, you had a lane stay in it.

But I guess very minor celebrity can go to someones head and make them do crazy things. /s (damn you Poe's law)

I always disliked how Arya's story at the temple of black and white went.....

A girl speaks the truth!

Arya Stark facing Jaqen H'ghar once again, her sightless eyes searching the blackness, "who are you?" he asks. "I am no body" she replies; "a girl lies!" says Jaqen. "WHO are you?"; Arya angry now, stares blankly at him, "I am Arya of the house Stark! I am The Cat of the Canals! I am the boy Arry; I am the Blind Gir!; I am anybody!". "Yessss" replies Jaqen "a girl speaks the truth".

The realisation dawns; the Waif who tormented Arya for the longest time never realised this was the test; her vision clears. Jaqen H'ghar smiles down at Arya, you are anybody, you are everybody!

The Waif, realising that Arya has passed her tries to kill Arya. The Waif is not much of a challenge and Arya kills her in self defence. Jaqen is not pleased, Arya was not sanctioned to kill The Waif. She is forced to leave the temple.....she returns to Westeros and the story continues from there.

Last Windows I ran full-time was XP, ran Win7 for a couple of months before switching Ubuntu 10.04; still used Win XP and Win7 in VM's for years for specific applications.

Win10 is the OS on the work machines, some of it is really nice, but so much feels backward. I don't get why there is still control panel and the settings app. Why is notepad so shit....

I used Win11 recently, it looks quite nice, more consistent than 10 at least. But everything I have read makes me want to stay away.

Ran Ubuntu LTS's finishing with 20.04, have since been running Mint. Snap's made Ubuntu a worse experience for me.

I was having a lot of random crashes and weird errors on my Mint install, using the logs, I tracked it down to a SSD fault.

I really didn't want to send it back, since I got it from Amazon and I'm in NZ.... So after a bit of checking I found that the FW on the SSD was not the latest. Updated the FW, went from at least 1 crash per workday, to no crashes in the last 6 months.

My SSD is a WD SN850X 4TB