eureka

Sociopaths always win.

That's not exactly my point, it's more that our current political economy penalises pro-social behaviour (a business is more likely to be out-competed and fail if they actually treat their workers and customers well, so it's an exceptional thing to see) and sociopaths are rewarded for profiting in this system, their gain comes at our exploitation so they're effectively rewarded for hurting us.

If we can restructure our political economy so that sociopaths are rewarded by contributing to society, then their own competitiveness and greed is much less of a problem. For lack of another better developed-world example, look at how China keeps their billionaires on a leash^[https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/#fnref14]. Now obviously there's plenty of problems in their political system and some would say they their billionaires are still a problem despite them being dominated by the government, but it's an example of an alternative to the oligarchical system we know, proof that there are successful ways forwards which are applicable to our economies, even if we don't copy them exactly (that would be silly).

(On top of this, a society is certainly capable of detecting and ostracising or punishing anti-social people such as sociopaths. The problem is that the most important ones are effectively out of reach in our society since they have a police force protecting them and we have a more alienated, disorganised society)

Australia makes and exports different things to the USA. For example, there are some parts of their bomber planes that only an Australian factory makes. If we stopped trading it, they couldn't buy any more of those bombers.

There's also the impact of solidarity, where if we stop trade, then other countries are more likely to do the same. This effect has happened with previous blockades and with the general sentiment towards the conflict in Western governments, one country takes the first step and others soon follow.

It also means that, as smaller partners stop trade, the US soon becomes a single point of failure, where a port strike or community blockade (as some in the USA have done before) has more direct impact.

Wow, that's surprising. It's got less than a dozen users posting cute fox photos. Maybe they're automatically blocking booru software, since plenty of others have porn.

...that's not how addition and subtraction works, my friend.

and stop allowing the only export of F-35 fuselages in the world

You do realize Australians can't vote in the US election, right? Why the hell is she wasting time over here? We don't want her.

Why do you hate Bill Gates now?

Always have. This isn't a new concept, and their ~~reputation laundering~~ philanthorpism does not come close to countering the harm they and their foundation are still doing.

Hasn’t he been redistributing wealth properly?

For starters, holding around a hundred billion is hardly redistributing. That's still hoarding.

I don't have time right now to find that short-list of critiques @davel@lemmy.ml has, but in the mean time, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthrocapitalism is a good diving board, combined with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation#Criticism

If AI replaces a lot of workers, we’ll have too many people in the country.

Unless you're in China or India, you can look at those two countries to see just how high population can get without destroying a country. Literally in the billions. The bigger problem is how the country organises, not just the number of people. I'm guessing you can look outside for a few minutes or hours and notice plenty of jobs which could use people doing them, the problem is our political-economic system forces people to do what's profitable, instead of what actually needs to be done. And when the people with enough money to employ people (i.e. to decide what work we do) are stingy parasites, we get this mass unemployment. In fact, some of that unemployment is intentional.

But, with all that said, you're absolutely correct that we also need to consider the current situation and cope with that, and that a good government needs to try and manage that. And they're not.

but decrease how much each person has available as resources? Essentially just throwing a lot of people into poverty?

That is not implied. Especially if we consider that the resources we waste are through supply chains rather than our own direct use. If my electrical supply comes from from a more efficient source, then my usage can be less wasteful and potentially cheaper. If my city continues to improve public transport, I can actually save money and use less resources in daily transit. Products we consume have serious potential to conserve resources at a mass scale, and often it even saves them money due to paying less for resources needed in production. A lot of waste also comes from overproduction, think of those Dunkin' Donuts end-of-day-disposal videos. We make far more than we need in so many areas.

Furthermore, the most wasteful people are a minority of the mega-rich. You and I probably don't need to cut down much on jet fuel costs. People close to poverty usually aren't (directly) wasteful, hell, some of them actually reduce waste through dumpster-diving and recycling schemes.

If that would ever happen.

Well, you see, the thing about capitalism is it empowers exactly the people who don't want that to happen. Consumerism-driven, wasteful capitalism is the in-built trend of capitalism itself, not an unfortunate variant - even government regulation doesn't solve these problems.

Exactly. There is a world of difference between millions and billions, has horrible and deluded as many of the mega-millionaires are.

“I was hoping for either Big Macs or [fast food] pizza. That would have been better than the food that we were served,” said Nicholas Pinto.

This is a depressing statement. Especially the first half.