The reason why the appeal to poll (a modified version of appeal to majority) arguments are so terrible is because polls lack the sort of realities that people have to deal with. When polled, 91% of Canadians wanted to get rid of the plastic film in meat packaging. When polled they were only willing to pay an average of $0.03 per package of meat for the change. The cheapest alternative was $0.80.

The poll data for this solar issue can be found here. What you can find here (Page 5) is that Texans actually want to expand the use of all energy sources except for coal and natural gas. Support for renewables was very unifying for Democrats but very divisive for Republicans. This might have been a fault of the polling questions. One of the polling questions was "Do you want to become reliant on FORMOFENERGY." Most Republicans probably don't want to be seen as reliant on anything or anyone because independence is usually one of their values.

The telling poll result is that over 80% of Texans want to spend surplus dollars on expanding natural gas and diesel fired plants.

So anyway, I wouldn't count this poll as being completely legitimate. The phrasing of the questions may have resulted in people answering No to questions they would have answered Yes to if it was just "do we need more" or "should we build more."

Actually, every piece of farming equipment has this as a standard feature. According to the article those sorts of things wouldn't be changing with this law because they would mean removing safeguards.

The law proposed would make something like the MOU JD signed into law in some states. It's not certain what consequences this would have with the contracts. Which is why they're only considering this and not doing this. They have to study the particular impacts of this decision. They don't want to sign it into law and find out that they made a law that creates a recall issue that cripples agricultural for a year.

It's not a pure monopoly. It's more like how Google has a monopoly on web searches... but then there's still Bing.

Look, I don't own a Tesla but I know people own one. So this is entirely a strawman argument which hasn't been built up to be beaten but built up to try and represent their stance... which has flaws (hence strawman).

People who own Teslas believe that the company Tesla (and many believe specifically Elon Musk) is on the cusp of something great and an ever evolving company that will resolve all world problems through innovation. In just a short time Tesla has flown a car in space (wait that's Space-X), they've gotten men on Mars (wait... that hasn't happened yet), they've rescued children from a cave using a cool sub and owned a pedo over Twitter (wait... still not that company) and they've saved freedom on social media by liberating Twitter from corporate government lackies (oh gawd).

Tesla is a company that just always appears to come out with a new amazing life changing product every single six months. They had flamethrowers, home battery charging, solar roof panels (I'm pretty sure that's a different company sir!), full self driving, driver assist, all that cool TV stuff in your car, and no more dealers.

So it just seems like, if there's a company out there that's going to make the world better, it's going to be Tesla.

Now if you're a social Democrat you broadly hate unconstrained capitalism and if you're a Republican or libertarian you worry about surrendering to the authority of corporations and technology. These two forces come together to regulate innovation... and they do a very bad job at it. In the United States, Democrats will create a large number of procedural rules on regulatory organizations in order to create regulations that constrain innovation. The Republicans use these procedural rules to stall developments and block innovations.

So if today we said that USB-C is going to be the international standard for cord charging... that's going to be the standard forever. We'll be stuck with it forever. The countries and regions that locked in an electricity standard the latest have the more efficient electrical grids and more efficient plug ins. Companies could make them more efficient than they are.... but government regulation stops them from doing so. Similarly... baby food in the US can only be made by a couple of companies because regulations make it impossible to get a new baby food approved.

This is really the problem for these chargers. You make all chargers standard so they're universal to all cars to allow for faster growth in EVs... but then you'll be stuck with this technology forever. A technology eventually hits an end where you've maximized its output before you need to really start with a new curve. Something like ChatGPT is at the mid range of that curve.... still room to grow. Our electrical grid is at the end of it, it can't be improved anymore... we fundamentally need to make major changes in conductivity of power. The standard of charge can be improved a bit based on the change... but if some young inventor comes along and invents a better way of using it... we can't do that. Tesla has improved its charge ability a lot over the years and done recalls to make changes to allow for this kind of charging.

The other problem is money. When you buy a Tesla you're getting with it a subsidized rate.... in that Tesla doesn't profit off of their power.... only their vehicles. The superchargers were a huge loser for Tesla... which is why they slowed down the creation of their national network. But hypothetically if they're opened to everyone it also means that everyone gets the same rate (their are laws preventing preferential pricing in this manner). It means that the price of charging off of these things goes up to market rate.

It's kind of like how women are net benefactors of men paying more money on auto insurance. Most women don't actually want equality when it goes the other way. They're not willing to have their insurance rates go up in order for men to pay a fair price.

So yeah, tl;dr

Innovation concerns and price.

Okay, so here's the broad issue.

John Deere is kind of a monopolsitic farming equipment manufacturer. They're in cahoots with the US government on this. Every time there's "farming aid" that the US shifts around the world it's always John Deere equipment. This is because John Deere is the world's only clear American farming equipment company that manufacturers just about everything in the US. It's a huge boon to the US economy. Their two biggest rivals are AGCO (who work under a number of brands including Massey, Caterpillar, and Fendt), Kubota, and CNH Industrial (Case and New Holland). The US government wants to protect John Deere because the US government has decided it doesn't want to collaborate with Europe on things... they don't want to be dependent on Europe for anything (see: US spending trillions of dollars on chips manufacturing when they could just buy from Europe instead)

Farmers have a choice when it comes to farm equipment. I've actually done farming equipment acquisitions. When you talk to farming equipment sales people they're more than happy to give you a table with the projected income earnings you would get from their equipment based on what type of crop you have in mind. For most farmers it makes these decisions a lot easier. A harvester that is just 1CM wider might result in a 5% gross profit for that harvest.

So basically, in terms of your life time investment in that piece of equipment (including maintenance, purchase price, loans, etc.) John Deere is just always a clear winner on these tables. Because of this farmers have chosen John Deere wherever they can. It's the world's most popular brand.

John Deere used this position to add even more value to their equipment packages to make them even more valuable.... and it's a part of the purchase now. By signing on to a maintenance contract with John Deere you get an even cheaper piece of equipment but now you have to pay exclusively JD for maintenance.

And I can't say this enough... farmers know what they're getting into when they get into these agreements. They have competitors they can go to that don't have these contracts. They're choosing John Deere because it's the one that'll earn them the most money. Most companies have a warranty that operates like this for two years and farmers are very happy with that (until they void their warranty by trying to fix it themselves). JD is offering a lifetime warranty on their equipment... as long as you don't try to fix it themselves.

John Deere settled the issue. They made it so that farmers could fix their own equipment and be provided their own manuals as long as they re-signed their contract. The new contract would require that they cannot sue John Deere for any liability issues, they have to use OEM parts and they can't tamper with the DEF system (federal law requires all new farming equipment to have it).

But some feel like this just isn't good enough. They feel like John Deere should just not be allowed to provide these types of contracts at all. The US drags their feet on this because they're in bed with John Deere... but they also don't know what happens next. Like if you say that these contracts are void... are you fucking over a lot of people?

Because if these contracts are void for farmers wanting to fix their equipment... they're certainly void for John Deere. All these farmers paid MORE for these tractors on the basis that they were getting a lifetime maintenance contract. If that arrangement is void does it also mean JD is no longer liable for providing repairs to the people who want it for free? It's a huge cost savings for JD if the solution becomes to just make these kinds of contracts illegal.

By also going against an iconic exclusively American brand you're also opening the doors of foreign competition... which means US job lay offs... which will make some politicians politically vulnerable. Farmers can choose a lot of brands... they choose JD... almost entirely because of price but also because of US and state level endorsements. It's similar to a lot of the "Buy American" proposals from the US government.... proposals that have always been illegal by the standards of USMCA... but that the US illegally continues to push. It'd have a similar impact to say, the US government deciding to buy a series of fighter jets from France.

Yes. Like I don't know any of the people who compete in horse jumping and I suspect most of the world doesn't. But they're all famous. Someone like David Chalmbers is a complete and total rockstar in philosophy... but broadly the world doesn't know who he is.

The term celebrity simply refers to being known. Sometimes the word is modified "local celebrity" to refer to people who are well known only in your town or city.

I'm not talking about combining a bunch of random jobs. I'm talking about combining like-jobs for people who have free time while working.

I don't think this is correct. There's a lot you can do by shifting people around and tightening up efficiency... but ultimately you can have multiple jobs that could be combined into one. In large corporate culture a lot of people survive by hiding and acting as though they have more work than they actually do.

There's only so much efficiency you can purchase and it has a cost. If you can purchase a 30% efficiency by updating a software... it means you would need 30% less people to do the same job.

We're about to hit a lull in tech where it won't be expanding largely due to a lack of investable opportunities. A lot of these tech companies have been trying to recreate the wheel on a number of products and basically about a thousand of them are all market losers all at once. Tightening up their operations will mean shelving a lot of projects that are going nowhere.

Could you imagine how much money Google could have saved if they shelved Stadia right away? Or how much money Facebook would be ahead if they never engaged in the Metaverse? There's all sorts of large projects you can just shelf in these companies that have no real value. Those employees can be reassigned to other tasks... but more likely getting rid of them and making them reapply is simpler.

It comes from a period of time when logical empirical thought were things. But the truth is, we're actually a bit of both. We have genetic knowledge (for example a baby knows how to cry without first having to learn it from experience). And we have things we learn.

Plato was the guy who pushed innatism hard. His argument was that all of the ideas are just out there floating (THE FORMS) and when we learn we're not learning new things but remembering things that already exist.

They're all famous though. In modern times. If you're famous enough to have a Wikipedia entry about you, you're famous.

Being a celebrity simply means you are famous. And all of these people are famous. Who doesn't know who Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Kim Kardashion, and Tiger Woods are?

They can't. It's not politically viable. The average American isn't willing to make the sacrifices short term to save down the road. America's left want to try and sell it as something you can just 'bill corporations' to do. It's not how these things work. You pay more taxes and you get those things.

The path in the past was to make cuts to the US military and use that money to fund it. But with relations with Russia flaring up again... that position is also not politically viable.

Yes it's this subreddit, so your post will probably be deleted. The fact is the measure he announced hasn't been put in place yet. Deforestation could have slowed because illegal foresting operations might not be willing to risk coming into conflict with the Brazilian government. It could be that legal forest clearing is worried that their operations might become illegal and have been doing layoffs. It could be that there's a labor shortage and so it has become harder to hire people for logging.

But it's certainly not anything Lula did. It's kind of like how Donald Trump had a roaring stock market in his first month in office. It's politically useful to claim it as a win. But it's a win for the nation... not an individual.

This would be their energy mix, so used.

I don't see this going anywhere. Their case is that their website says it invests in "wind, solar, hydrogen, electric charging and more" that they've found they're misleading investors since they've only invested 2.5% of their capex on wind and solar (compared to 12% for this whole group).

But this fund isn't just for wind and solar power. It also covers electric charging stations at Shell gas stations, tidal power, geothermal power, hydrogen, blended biofuels, and hydropower.

There's really nothing misleading about what they're saying here to investors. If you read that page and thought Shell was putting 12% of its capex budget into solar... well I have a bridge to sell you.

America's not actually that far behind Europe. In 2022 Europe was using more fossil fuels than America due to the surge in coal use. Most countries are expected to reduce their fossil fuels in 2023 because there's an expectation of a bubble pop.

There's already western soldiers in Ukraine. A lot of them returned home because they became really disenfranchised with just how badly the operations were run.

Hopes are not reality. It would be nice if Russia lost a war soon. But the reality is Russia can sustain this war for a very very long time, Ukraine cannot. They're not about to lose anything other than their position in the world.

In terms of Russia they only need hardware that is strong enough to bully their neighbors. They have nuclear weapons, they're not going to war with China or America any time soon.

For the most part, 99% of the countries of the world don't need modern equipment unless they're intending to go into a war with their neighbors. They only have to have the same level of military as their neighbors to maintain peace. If one neighboring country got more advanced weapons it'd become an arms race. It's why Pakistan and India both got nuclear weapons around the same time. Pakistan sources most of its equipment from Russia and China. India manufactures most of its equipment with permission from the country that developed it.

Which is why a country like India is hesitant to take on US equipment. The US rarely allows other countries to manufacture their equipment.

There's a part of Canada where they grow root vegetables and there's a part of Canada where they grow wheat. And the difference between the two in distance would be like Paris to Romania.

So anyway the only recipes for my area are ginger beef and a selection of cocktails.

From $344/share to $170/share. It used to be valued at 40x revenue. Now it's valued at 15x revenue. Which is still quite a bit too high.... in that it's more than all other American automakers combined.

It's also not really all that monopolistic. The creation of the Xbox was monopolistic. Microsoft lost money for like 5-6 years on their gaming division to try and get a cut into the market. But that also shows how difficult and monopolistic gaming is. A person can't just start up a new gaming platform, it has to be a giant multinational corporation. We shouldn't be talking about just splitting up Microsoft, it should be every single publisher.... but then if we did that Chinese based Tencent and Japanese based Sony would just stay giant and have a monopoly.

That's true in North America but in Europe they don't have very large cabs. Regulations prevent things like sleepers so you usually only see drivers driving for an 8 hour day.

It's obviously not a universal truck that'll be useful everywhere. Where it will be useful is for inner city deliveries. Your typical inner city semi might travel 100-200 KM a day. They spend a lot of time unloading trailers where... your truck is typically turned off (and maybe in the future plugged in somewhere).

Obviously it's not going to replace every single truck on the road... but none of these automakers will. If every single automaker switched over to electric today, it would still take 30 days to replace every single diesel truck on the road.