Yup, they deliberately ran it into the ground. They took out loans against Kmart to buy Sears and sold Sears and Kmart properties off to give themselves money via stock buybacks.

And what’s worse, because it worked, you can see similar actions happening to other major retail outlets. Target, in particular, seems to be following directly in the footsteps of Kmart.

Agreed, very well done.

usr does mean user. It was the place for user managed stuff originally. The home directory used to be a sub directory of the usr directory.

The meaning and purpose of unix directories has very organically evolved. Heck, it’s still evolving. For example, the new .config directory in the home directory.

An insulated box with a decent compressor does not cost 10k. Making a compressor that fails after 2 years is actually hard to do, something both LG and Samsung spent time and money to achieve.

Consider, for example, that nearly every car manufactured with an AC. Which is exactly the same tech as a fridge. Yet you rarely end up needing to replace the compressor on your car. You might need to recharge it or clean it, but not replace the compressor. 10k of your car price isn’t the HVAC.

There’s some appliance breakdown vids (idk if Rossman is one of them) but the gist is Samsung and LG like to put cheap plastic parts in high wear locations which inevitably fail.

Fridges are dead simple appliances. A compressor and evaporator coils with a temperature sensor. There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t outlast you and everyone you love.

It’s insane these “premium” brands are built to fall like they do.

I think we are on the same page. I completely agree that EVs aren’t enough or even the best solution.

Where does your power come from?

Right now? Primarily hydro with a strong solar and wind showing. Roughly 10% of my power is from Fossil fuels.

You are just shifting the shit elsewhere

Even with a pure fossil fuel grid, EVs still end up producing less CO2 than ICE vehicles. However, grids aren’t pure fossil fuels which means EVs are far cleaner than Fossil fuel vehicles. Especially in my current circumstance.

Less than 8% of energy consumption in the US comes from renewable energy. Another 8% come from nuclear.

13% while being one of the fastest growing energy production sectors.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

That’s petrol / natural gas / coal powering your home, factories, shops, and restaurant

Not mine because I live in the Pacific North West which is the greenest grid in the US.

I wasn’t fully aware of NVK and where it’s at. It’s actually pretty exciting. I wouldn’t mind dropping my current nvidia binary blob for fully open source drivers.

Not as bad as you might think. The nouveau drivers have come a long way for maxwell. You should give it a shot if you haven’t. But, unfortunately, if you are using anything new then nouveau sucks. It’s a fun game where you get to wait until nvidia no longer wants to support your GPU and hope by that point that nouveau has progressed far enough that you won’t be looking at noman’s land.

Graphics drivers are what matters. Your orange pi uses a mali GPU which is well supported by Linux (thanks ARM).

nVidia is just barely at the point where their most recent gpu drivers aren’t terrible under Wayland. It’s taken a while to get there.

GPUs with good open source drivers will fare fine.

Not just as easy. There’s a lot of room for someone to say “this was actually just metaphor” or even “these are just stories to convey values”.

Take the tower of Babel, for example, we know it never happened. However, a more progressive Christian or Jewish tradition can use the story to talk about how sometimes cultural differences are simply surface level, we are all ultimately the same people. Mormons aren’t so lucky because the book of Mormon was pitched as a literal history and part of the book has literal refugees from the tower of Babel.

Unlike the Bible, we have the author of the religion who very well documented how literal everything is. We don’t even know who authored nearly any book in the Bible or their motivations.

I’m not arguing for a god, I’m an atheist exmo. However, there’s a pretty big difference between a bunch of old stories compiled together into a book and a book of fiction that the author went out of his way to claim was “the most correct book ever written”.

It’s harder to believe because it’s easily disproven. Turns out Joseph’s “translation” of ancient Egyptian wasn’t inspired.

Is there even a non-capitalist government in existence? Even the communist nations generally have a currency and tiered income based on position.

Let us now double down. Previously (Block 2005; 2013) wrote that slavery, in the absence of violence, compulsion, NAP violation was ―not so bad.‖ That was a poor choice of words. It was an inaccurate understatement. The truth of the matter is that under these conditions ―slavery‖ would be a positive good. There, I said it. I will say it again: ―Slavery‖ would be a positive good, under these conditions. Make of that what you will, New York Times and other enemies of freedom and logic. But note that when I assert that ―slavery‖ would be a benefit, two things occurred. First, I placed quote marks (―‖) around the word ―slavery‖ and second I mentioned that under these conditions it would be beneficial. I did not say, and I entirely reject the notion that slavery as actually practiced was anything other than a disgrace, a stark horrid evil. It is my view that the movies ―Django Unchained,‖ ―Twelve Years a Slave,‖ and the television series ―Roots‖ are roughly accurate depictions of this monstrous practice

We currently have a set of laws that’s like twenty feet long when you print it out, bind it, and put it on the shelves.

Turns out, life is complex. It’s either this or you end up having “rules for me but not for thee”.

But to this point, what would you have your central government in charge of? I’m certainly for axing parts of the central gov and expanding others (For example, I’d nationalize healthcare and drug production and abolish ICE and the DEA). That is, I’d push for a government more concerned with taking care of citizens and less concerned with penalizing inconsequential things like not being born here.

The reason for the miles long laws is because when you don’t have them, a capitalist society will work around them. A recent behind the bastards episode on the hawks nest tunnel ( https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-one-the-deadliest-workplace-disaster-in-u-s-history/id1373812661?i=1000632417312 ) is a perfect example of how these sorts of regulations get created and grow.

Pretty sure the libertarian stance on slavery is that it is wrong

Libertarians are VERY individualistic (shocker) which means no 2 libertarians define libertarianism the same way.

HOWEVER, you literally just have to search for “slavery libertarian” in the google box to find all sorts of fairly high profile libertarians arguing about how slavery can actually be a good thing that we should allow.

For example, from Walter Block: http://www.kspjournals.org/index.php/JEST/article/view/346

The decision to kill would an act of defense. Organized sex trafficking preys on members of a community. If you see it happen, stop it. If that means killing the perpetrator, you’d need to justify it to your community, but you don’t have to kill them to stop it.

The argument you use there is the same argument used for genocide “We had to defend ourselves from X who are corrupting our society and way of life!”. The appeal to community only works if the community doesn’t hold prejudices against others.

But further, not how sex trafficking/child porn works. It’s not this secret cabal of kidnappers stealing babies in the night. Sex trafficking is almost always perpetrated by a trusted individual. Where this gets real bad is cults like the Oneida cult which pushed for free love of children. And this gets back to my original point, how does the community address a problem when the community IS the problem?

Both of those systems would thrive in a libertarian model and they would have a lot less red tape to contend with in order to liberate the cult members.

Red tape is not what stops people from addressing cults. It’s actually funny you mention Jonestown and mormons because both movements famously relocated their members to escape government control and interference. So you are saying that a libertarian model with even less government control would somehow end cults faster? I really suggest you read up on how cults function and move because quiet literally they are hoping and looking for libertarian areas to setup shop. Cults LOVE to pick and take over small remote locations precisely to escape the pesky government red tape and oversight. (see: Rajneeshpuram as an example).

What checks to cults do we currently have?

Not enough, but more than you’d expect. You can leave a cult, sue it if they start tracking you. Cults that abuse children (such as the FLDS) can be dismantled and their leaders arrested. Cults that physically harm or imprison their members can be subjected to legal actions (which is why scientologists put their member prison in international waters). Certainly the current system isn’t perfect, slow evolution is the nature of centralized governments. However, that slow evolution also (usually) prevents overreaction.

Why hasn’t the state eliminated cults if they’re so capable?

It’s not a question of elimination. You can’t eliminate cults anymore than you could eliminate religion itself. (and, in fact, it’s likely easier to eliminate religion as there are non-religious cults). The question is one of harm reduction to citizens. One of checks and balances to make sure the state isn’t overreaching while simultaneously penalizing organizations that do. It’s a game of cat and mouse, ultimately. The issue is these are things only fixed by regulation. Take away all the regulation and you are basically just saying “Well, hopefully that cult will sort itself out”.

Jonestown is a really good example of why just leaving them alone is a bad idea. Jonestown happened because the leader of that movement became so paranoid that when a senator visited the community, that was enough to have him push for mass suicide.

Just for your future arguments, ruby ridge is a much better example of centralized government absolutely doing the wrong thing.

Killing child pornographers that would fight to continue producing child pornography is not a controversial or complicated idea. Identify the group, get rid of it. If they won’t stop voluntarily, kill them. That’s direct action and community defense. Cornerstones of libertarian ideology.

First, by what authority can a libertarian society kill another? Should there be some sort of trial? Or do you propose we just ride and kill anyone we deem undesirable? And where’s the line? Certainly it’s pretty easy to argue that child porn producers and slavers might qualify but what of others? How do you deal with the majority falling into fascism and deciding “You know what, the Catholics are a plague on society and we should eliminate them.”

I’m not going to get into the cult bit, that’s an entirely different conversation.

You should, because cults are very real things that would thrive under most libertarian models. They also show a real big problem, with unchecked power it’s pretty easy to seriously abuse societies members. Even when they technically have the freedom to leave. What happens if we remove all checks to cults? Do we decide to kill them too when the decide not to continue?

Child porn and slavery are being produced in societies with central government right now and very little is being done about it.

There’s a difference between very little and nothing. In pretty much every libertarian model I know of, if a bunch of child porn producers band together to make the child porn production center, nothing would stop them. The socialist libertarian movement relies heavily on local community action, but that falls apart quickly when the community is, say, a cult.

Centralized gov doesn’t have 100% of a solution here, obviously, but it has a lot more power to act, criminalize, and/or force treatment.

In a stateless, moneyless society there would be no incentive for slave labor and I think that would largely/entirely disappear.

I disagree. So long as there’s a need for labor, slavery is going to be a possibility. Some jobs suck and in a moneyless society figuring out a way to incentivize someone to take that job will be tough.

There’s more than a few examples of slavery in non-capitalist societies.

There hasn’t been a lot of research into what causes pedophilia or how to treat it in a way that would reduce/eliminate people acting on those urges.

Yes, there has. Just because there’s not sure fire solutions to it doesn’t mean it’s not widely researched. Would it surprise you to learn that one of the best treatments for pedophilia is talk therapy? It doesn’t eliminate the urges but it lowers the risk of injuring a child. The problem is, like other mental illnesses, we don’t have cures only long term care to reduce harm.

Putting that aside, covering a philosophical flaw with “Maybe someday research will solve this” is sort of like saying for capitalism “Maybe someday replicators will solve this”.

Poverty is strongly linked to sexual violence of all kinds and the abolition of poverty would surely have a big part to play in the reduction of many things, including child sexual abuse. A society formed around the ideals of libertarian socialism present a real opportunity to end the cycle of abuse and that would certainly play a role in reducing child sexual exploitation.

A doesn’t follow B. There’s no evidence that libertarian socialism would eliminate poverty. And, in fact, I’d argue that while it may solve poverty in some regions it would exacerbate it in others. One of the benefits of a global economy is that we can take advantages of the growing season in one world region vs another. Libertarian socialism imagines a world of isolated islands which is entirely counter productive general efficiencies with the production of goods.

Think about it this way, You can grow oranges in California. You cannot grow oranges in Alaska. In a world where libertarian socialism has taken hold, how would an Alaskan community survive and thrive? On the charity of other communities? What happens when one community sees that “Hey, I could send my aid to alaska, but if I send it to Florida they have some delicious gator meat and maybe they’ll be willing to send me more”… opps, just reinvented capitalism.

One of the strengths (and weaknesses) of capitalism is the global marketplace it creates. Localizing with libertarianism presents the same problems faced by rural communities in the old west. If you can’t grow it, you do without it.

There are certainly benefits to libertarian socialism, it allows for very fast actions at the local level. But there’s a major downside in that without an overarching government getting every community to play nice with one another is basically impossible. In a lib social world you couldn’t stop the an-cap dingbats from creating their feudalistic hellscape.

This comes to another fundamental issue with libertariansim of all flavors. They all envision of world where everyone has the same ideology. That world doesn’t and will never exist.

Left libertarians are still opposed to a strong central government which is a core issue with libertarianism.

In your ideal government, how would child porn or slavery be addressed? Let’s assume there’s a community that formed because they think it’s a good thing.