Right, you could disagree on which things to prioritize over dollar profits. My main point is that these preferences are not irrational like was asserted. At the scale of a sovereign wealth fund or pensions, you need to care about externalities; in the case of Denmark vs SpaceX you have something relatively concrete, in other cases we need to keep in mind that the goal of these funds are to improve the welfare of who they serve, and see past the dollar signs to take into account the consequences of the investments.
> it is fundamentally important that nobody has too much power
> taking power away from the capitalist class
An obvious and apparently irresolvable contradiction.
Capitalist power is inherently anarchic and isn't power at all. It's simply order emerging from the anarchy of the market. But the ability to take that power away from them, no matter how you measure it, itself falls into the category of "too much power" with wide margin. And with this amount of power there will be no change of hands that hold it.
Prices haven't risen THAT much and are quite affordable. And if you look at the improved quality of upscalers (DLLS 4.5 for example), gaming is now more affordable than ever, despite the increased cost of components.
Of course, the 5090 prices are insane, as are for SOME memory models, but that's nothing new and represents a fairly small market share.
> When I started building gaming pcs, the top top card was 750$ (NZD)
When I started building gaming PC, the top $700 cards didn't even provide comfortable performance or graphics. Back then, you were supposed to have several of this connected SLI or somethin. And even then, it wasn't always reliable, and it resulted in stuttering, lags, and graphical artifacts (in cases when it worked). Today, even $700 graphics cards are a much better product from a user perspective than the high-end cards of that time (and that's not even taking into account that $700 cards back then were much more expensive).
> When I started building gaming PC, the top $700 cards didn't even provide comfortable performance or graphics.
When would this have been? I can not remember a time this was accurate for the games of the time, outside of a handful of meme titles like the original crysis that made bad hardware bets. Most of them fulfilled the needs of the software and hardware of the time. I'd say the biggest issue was that for a time, software and hardware were advancing so rapidly that you wouldnt get very long out of your hardware, but that's just the reality of rapid development and not the fault or failure of any specific hardware release.
> Back then, you were supposed to have several of this connected SLI or somethin.
SLI was aimed squarely at enthusiasts, not at joe-average PC gamer and it was certainly never a requirement. It existed as a halo feature for people chasing maximum performance, benchmark scores, and bragging rights.
Improved quality used to be the justification for buying new hardware at a similar price to the old hardware when it came out new. Now the 5060/70s are 4 figure cards.
As for how much the prices have actually risen, it’s not hard to see if this is true or not. If doubling of prices doesn’t raise your eyebrows, I’m not sure what will.
It's much easier to steal from a small, weak, and inefficient economy. Therefore, the incentives are usually exactly the opposite: to make the economy worse so that it would be easier and safer to engage in corruption.
> Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences.
In terms of gaining political support, being a victim in the modern world is very advantageous. The more of your civilians die unjustly, the more the media will portray you as a great and brave leader. There is nothing hilarious about this, only cynicism of the leaders of the country.
The climate is changing in a positive direction for farming. Farming is easier now than ever before. There's literally no chance of food shortages. Unless, of course, there's another attempt at building socialism.
You cannot state a contrary opinion like that here without kicking off the tribalism mentality. Yes, hacker news internet nerds have that. You can observe it in the wild above by the incessant down votes.
It's always amazing how fatties can shift responsibility onto others. The calorie count for Cola is listed right on the bottle. Just don't drink it if you're to fat. And spend a few hours teaching your fat kids to read.
> The calorie count for Cola is listed right on the bottle. Just don't drink it if you're to fat. And spend a few hours teaching your fat kids to read.
it is legal to drink Cola, yes? so I will drink it as I have no control over it... eventually I am going to have serious health issues... and Ray20 will pay for this from his taxes... or alternatively, we can add some tax to companies that are net negative to society and are causing Ray20's money to be spent on my fat asses healthcare, yes?
> or alternatively, we can add some tax to companies that are net negative to society
Or alternatively, we can leave Ray20 alone and not force him to pay for the treatment of a 200 kg fatties with the illegal motorcycle racing and wingsuit jumping hobbies.
> companies that are net negative to society
It is fatties who are net negative to society, not companies.
> Post-2022 some of those families stopped talking to each other, the propaganda is stronger than the family ties.
I don't think it's a matter of propaganda. We're talking about totalitarian dictatorships on both sides of the barricades, where such communication with relatives on the other side have very real risks of decades in prison or even death.
> seems to miss the institutional knowledge, and experience
Or the exact opposite. Not every institutional experience is good and useful. Some are quite the opposite. I mean, term limits are one of the most common democratic institutions for precisely this reason. We WANT some knowledge and experience to walk out the door.
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