It's an observable metric. If I don't follow any "return to tradition" Statue PFP style posters, how often should the "for you" tab show you those style posts compared to posts by people I follow, who they follow, and who they interact with?
Pre and post acquisition it was a clear shift. I would only see that style of poster when people I followed purposefully interacted with them. Post Acquisition, I began to get many more anti-immigrant, pro-white, pro-nationalism style posts in my feed.
> The IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of command and are effectively moving and acting by momentum
This was by design via the mosaic defense tactic.
They know the US prides itself on decapitation strikes, "taking out the leader of x" was a monthly headline during our time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and during the events of ISIS/syrian civil war. It's how the special forces operated, taking out a "leader", collecting all the names they could find in their possession, and taking those guys out. In the later days of Afghanistan, they stopped even trying to find out who the names were. If you were some mid-level Taliban member's dentist, you'd be fair game.
So Iran built a defense for that, a military that does not need a central command to continue fighting. They have their orders and they'll continue to carry them out. Completely bypass the benefits of highly accurate munitions, cyber intelligence, etc.
That's the same reason the first round of the Millennium challenge won outright. The red-team leadership knew to not expect last year's war today, and used their brains to exploit the weaknesses of a highly mechanized and sophisticated military.
What would such predelegated instructions look like, how large is the state space in that flowchart? How effective is control theory with a tiny state space? This doesn't sound like a survival plan, but a self-splintering plan: some military units will capitulate or defect while others fight on, when pushed till the edge, or is there some kind of direct-democracy-within-the-IRGC? that doesn't sound plausible...
Basically sounds like the military from Imperial Japan during the end of WW2, with scattered units continuing to fight, surrender not believed an option, not aware, or in disbelief that Japan has surrendered...
Let's hope it doesn't have to lead to the same conclusion?
The Swedish military famously works the same way (or at least used to) - they're trained to uphold the Swedish constitution themselves regardless of what their leadership says, with the result that they saved many lives in former Yugoslavia despite orders not to intervene: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/09/20/trigger... .
This isn't a complicated war. The US can't and won't do occupations, so the only thing you need to do is cause problems till they leave.
Iran doesn't have to conventionally defeat the US military and can't: so they're just not doing that, and instead going after valuable economic targets which are politically sensitive to Americans and impossible to defend since they're risk sensitive.
> "People are seeing something I'm not, what am I missing?"
I've seen people celebrate horrors beyond my comprehension. Cheer the deaths of innocent people because it may inch some abstract national goal closer to a similarly abstract measurement. Insist that lives in one place are worth less than lives in another.
Should I ask "what am I missing"?
I don't think so, sometimes you draw a line on moral or ethical grounds. Some of those lines should never be given the ability to be fluid. It will always be wrong to bomb a school of children, just like (for Drew and I) it will be wrong to rip the livelyhood from under millions of people's feet for shareholder value. It will be wrong to ignore damaging consequences to the environment. It will be wrong to insist a low quality imitation should ever hold the same value as the original idea.
> rip the livelyhood from under millions of people's feet
I have never gotten this. How is livelihood being "ripped away"? There is enormous capability made available to anyone and everyone who wants to take hold of and do something with it. Just as it's on each individual to go through the process and pains of landing a job (or building a business, etc), it's also on each individual to keep up with changes that may affect their livelihood. If they want to keep it.
Who does it benefit to automate away well paid industries? For every well paid industry mostly automated away, you remove one more path for financial mobility.
One less path available means more people doomed to the service economy serfdom. You can be incredibly intelligent, creative, personable, and driven, but bad luck can still doom you to the role of a serf.
It's incredibly naive to assume the pattern of the short history of industrialization will continue. More jobs may have been created in the past, but where are those plans for the future? Why is it imperative we accept the plans of people making money hand over fist, while also forced to endure the hardships of adapting?
Jeff Bezos won't have difficulties adapting, but the average citizen will lose their healthcare and get beaten by a cop for protesting their own social murder.
Pure automation and efficiency can't be the one true path if we want to maintain our current economic system. Capitalism needs waste and inefficiency. It has little room for charity when the shareholders are the end beneficiary.
It benefits humanity as a whole to have all industries, across the board, automated away. Right now that's primarily happening in service economy, which essentially means either there are increasingly fewer "serfs", or they're moving up the ladder. This is just accelerating the process and pushing from the top.
In the end eventually everyone will be at the same industry earning potential level (or whatever it's called), and then there will literally be no more "potential for earning" because there would be 0 economic value to human labor (but there will always be aesthetic value). And by then the greatest collective decision the majority of mankind will have to make in its existence would already have been made: do away with this highly flawed and unsustainable economic system, or be wholly at the mercy and whims of those unreasonably trying to keep it in place. It's up to us whether the inevitably fully automated future is a dystopia, or utopia. There is no viable middle ground.
The gun companies have incentive to sell as many guns as they can, to the consumerist base of gun hobbyists.
There are 500M guns in the US because it's a hobby based on buying and collecting.
Due to the amount of guns in circulation, it is common for guns to be stolen.
Therefore, there are more "illegal" guns in circulation due to the consumerist nature of gun owners, and the companies making money on selling these guns.
Without a large amount of guns in circulation, there would not be a similarly large amount of illegal guns in circulation, as they almost all came from a factory somewhere.
I like guns but I am so tired of people acting like the 2nd amendment insists it's their right to treat firearms like goddamn funkopops.
In states with legal marijuana, we set limits on the number of plants one can keep on their property, yet there is no limit to how many firearms one can poorly store for a slightly competent criminal to come collect under their nose. No liability for poorly storing them either unless it's in the immediate vicinity of a toddler.
I dont think the constitution has an amendement that guarantees freedom of Marijuana ownership. I think that's the main difference. This is akin to saying that you need a license to drive to why not be required to have an ID to walk around on the streets. The difference is rather simple, one is protected by the constitution and the other isn't.
Also I don't think the consumerist gun ownes commit a lot of crimes with their guns. Unless they are a demographic that is known to be prone to lose or get their guns stolen super often, I don't see how they cause any real issue in term of gun violence. I agree that it is really cringe to see, but they are actually usually responsible in terms of ownership, storage, etc.
No matter how much you hate Communists, you must admit the fall of the USSR was catastrophic in terms of quality of life and life expectancy. All the public goods and services were sold off en masse and children were driven to prostitution to avoid starvation.
~30 years later all the quick investors of the privatization run the country and have been sending all their able bodied men into a drone-based meat grinder with no end in sight.
How do you bring down costs? generally you'd need to restrict real estate. Lock down rent costs for both residential and commercial.
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