Sold out manufacturing years ago. Long term building real physical products is going to be the only value. LLMs are going to drop the price of informational value.
Building widgets is not a high-profit industry, and every country that got good at building widgets wants the high-profit industries that the US had: tech and biotech and science in general.
Not recognizing the US's massive wealth and strength, and climbing down the value chain to imitate China, is a recipe for the decline of the US, which is being followed today.
Yep. Also an issue: the high profit industries are abused by pump and dump scammers like Vivek Ramaswamy who had his doctor mother run a phase 2 clinical trial on a struggling Alzheimer's drug he bought from GlaxoSmithKline before he cashed out and it inevitably failed phase 3 trials.
We're moving in the opposite direction of ensuring that capital is allocated productively in said industries by destroying regulations and agencies like the CFPB, FTC, SEC, and by giving platforms and political power to the cheaters and fraudsters who have infested the Republican party.
Looking at the stats, we seem to be manufacturing about as much as ever in the last 30 years, and the value of that manufacturing is skyrocketing. We're certainly employing fewer people in manufacturing, but it seems to be remarkably strong still.
>LLMs are going to drop the price of informational value.
Maybe... maybe not? I'm not going to try and predict the future wrt AI, personally.
Late stage capitalism, protracted and targeted destruction of public education and health systems, lack of STEM focus eroding most of their massive lead in innovation, overemphasis on preservation and subsidisation of dying energy vs new energy (also contributing to innovation losses), overemphasis on meaningless politics and culture wars that ultimately mean absolutely nothing, excessive inequality resulting in the destruction of productivity in the lower ~50% of the wealth pyramid, over-extraction of the middle class leading to declining birth rates (increasing reliance on immigration), poorer health outcomes than other developed countries due to numerous factors (broken overly exploitive health insurance system, terrible diet/obesity, decreasing vaccination rates), toothless antitrust leading to monopolies/duopolies in most critical areas further exacerbating the rent-seeking and over-extraction, loss of soft power due to destruction of the state system under first Trump admin and continued decline due to tariffs and being an unreliable international partner.
So there isn't one reason, there is a ton of reasons.
It's not irrecoverable but it's bad. I honestly hope there is some wake-up moment for Americans when they realise that their leaders have been selling them out for decades now.
If you think this is proof of it being true, then I am both worried and astonished. How about looking for the information yourself, instead of relying on LLMs? This is HN I thought?!
First of all - I said something different to what you are claiming I should produce citations for
I said, and I will quote "If the officer is acting within the policy/training they are given by their employer (and that includes not being told to not do something) then it's the employer's fault, and we (the taxpayer/ultimate employer) are liable for that."
Citation:
https://lawrencekstimes.com/2023/03/01/tran-case-settles/
Tran’s criminal case was prosecuted under former DA Branson’s administration; however, it has impacted the policies of District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, who took office in January 2021.
The DA’s office did not have a formal, written Brady-Giglio policy until Valdez implemented hers in January 2022.
Valdez’s Brady-Giglio policy asks law enforcement agencies to share information about “allegations” of misconduct made against their officers — not just “findings” of misconduct.
I wanted a citation of "even when the officer is well outside training and policy"
Because I cannot find any such occurrence
As to your demand for me to cite things that I never spoke of
> In November 2023, a settlement was reached between protester Eli Durand-McDonnell and two police officers who arrested him during a demonstration outside the summer home of Leonard Leo, a leader of the Federalist Society.
Police arrested Durand-McDonnell in July 2022 on a disorderly conduct charge amid protests over Leo’s role in efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Hancock County district attorney later dismissed the charge, citing the need for caution when political speech is involved. Durand-McDonnell subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against Officer Kevin Edgecomb and Officer Nathan Formby, alleging false arrest and violation of his free speech rights. Details of the settlement were not publicly available as of early November 2023.
> The family of Fanta Bility, an eight-year-old girl who was fatally shot by police outside a high school football game in 2021, reached an $11 million settlement with the Borough of Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, as well as its police chief and three former officers involved.
Police opened fire after a verbal altercation between teens escalated into a gunfight. Police gunfire inadvertently struck Bility and injured three others, including her twelve-year-old sister. Officers Brian Devaney, Sean Dolan, and Devon Smith were fired and later sentenced to probation, pleading guilty to reckless endangerment. As part of the settlement, Sharon Hill agreed to implement enhanced officer training, particularly concerning the use of deadly force. The Bility family, who established the Fanta Bility Foundation to honor her legacy and advocate for police reform, emphasized that no settlement could erase the tragedy but expressed hope for healing and change.
[Not a payout]
> In April 2023, as part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit over the treatment of demonstrators in 2020, former Minneapolis, Minnesota, police union head Lieutenant Bob Kroll agreed he would not work as a police officer or law enforcement leader in Hennepin, Ramsey, or Anoka counties during the next decade.
The lawsuit alleged that Kroll’s actions as a de facto policymaker led police to use excessive force against demonstrators in the protests that followed the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Department officer. Under the terms of the settlement, Kroll also agreed that he would not serve on the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training, and that he would testify in any trials related to the suit.
And, because people are saying "insurance will pay it"
> In February 2023, the insurance carrier of the City of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, agreed to pay $2 million to Clinton Jones Sr., whose son was fatally shot by an undercover police officer.
In 2015, then-Officer Nouman Raja shot and killed Corey Jones after his car broke down on an Interstate 95 off-ramp. Jones was on the phone with roadside assistance at the time of the shooting, and the recorded call revealed that Raja never identified himself as a police officer. Raja was found guilty of manslaughter and attempted murder in a separate criminal case in 2019 and received a twenty-five-year prison sentence.
When lobf posed the question "can you name a single example of a police department, union, or office paying out a settlement? Has it ever happened?", I read that as a rhetorical question that was meant to point out that an overwhelming majority of such cases are paid out by taxpayers, not a serious assertion that police officers themselves have never been held personally financially accountable a single time.
Would you at least acknowledge that US taxpayers are on the hook orders of magnitude more often then the offending officers themselves, and that there's a clear conflict of interest presented by this de-facto outcome? Yes, there are exceptions, as you've diligently pointed out, but those are noteworthy because they are the exceptions that prove the general rule of thumb.
Do you know of any US taxpayer who would explicitly, voluntarily, and freely offer to pay for the settlements resulting from the abusive, corrupt, or criminal conduct of police officers in their town, if that were an optional choice that every US taxpayer made distinctly from the implicit, collective choice to comply with public taxation to fund public services writ large?
If every city in the US had a ballot measure in the next election that allowed citizens to vote on whether they would voluntarily accept personal financial responsibility for the misconduct of their police department, OR, mandate that all future settlements come out of the police union / pension fund / guilty officers' personal finances, how do you think those votes would tend to go, across the country?
> When lobf posed the question "can you name a single example of a police department, union, or office paying out a settlement? Has it ever happened?", I read that as a rhetorical question
That's on you.
I showed that there are examples of those things actually happening.
> When lobf posed the question "can you name a single example of a police department, union, or office paying out a settlement? Has it ever happened?", I read that as a rhetorical question that was meant to point out that an overwhelming majority of such cases are paid out by taxpayers, not a serious assertion that police officers themselves have never been held personally financially accountable a single time.
Wut?
Do you mean, like I said previously that we the taxpayers are on the hook because we're the ultimate employers??
Or do you not read anything?
> Do you know of any US taxpayer who would explicitly, voluntarily, and freely offer to pay for the settlements resulting from the abusive, corrupt, or criminal conduct of police officers in their town, if that were an optional choice that every US taxpayer made distinctly from the implicit, collective choice to comply with public taxation to fund public services writ large?
Already covered.
You explicitly abdicated that responsibility to the council/governing organisation to do it on your behalf.
You explicitly expect that organisation to work within the laws of your area.
You explicitly expect victims of bad policing to be paid out monetary compensation
If you don't want any of that to happen, then vote for someone else who will do what you claim you want
> If every city in the US had a ballot measure in the next election that allowed citizens to vote on whether they would voluntarily accept personal financial responsibility for the misconduct of their police department, OR, mandate that all future settlements come out of the police union / pension fund / guilty officers' personal finances, how do you think those votes would tend to go, across the country?
You do vote, every time there is an election.
If you don't know what you are voting for, or you don't like what's on offer, that's on you.
>You explicitly abdicated that responsibility to the council/governing organisation to do it on your behalf.
I did not, and never would if given the choice. I had no choice in my citizenship, and would renounce it if given the option, which I am not. Any effort to abdicate the responsibilities involuntary imposed on me is ultimately met with a team of professionally trained gunmen sent by the state to kill me. You're making unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable assertions of fact regarding decisions I've never made.
>You explicitly expect that organisation to work within the laws of your area.
I explicitly do not recognize the legitimacy of the federal government. You are again asserting a provably false narrative about my life that you have no way of knowing.
>You explicitly expect victims of bad policing to be paid out monetary compensation
I do not. You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word explicitly. You appear to be confusing implicit with explicit. Even then, I don't agree with this even implicitly - I don't fundamentally recognize the legitimacy of the state, nor the right of the state to exercise violent force against people who never freely consented to the rules of the state in the first place. Again, you are hallucinating details about my preferences that simply do not exist.
>If you don't want any of that to happen, then vote for someone else who will do what you claim you want
I never agreed to be bound to the laws established by representatives selected through Democratic elections, and I would refuse if given the choice. I do not recognize the legitimacy of the state, nor of the people around me to establish an entity with a monopoly on legal violence, period, let alone to decide who gets to pick what forms of violence are or are not acceptable.
> If every city in the US had a ballot measure in the next election that allowed citizens to vote on whether they would voluntarily accept personal financial responsibility for the misconduct of their police department, OR, mandate that all future settlements come out of the police union / pension fund / guilty officers' personal finances, how do you think those votes would tend to go, across the country?
>You do vote, every time there is an election.
I don't vote and never have, as I do not fundamentally recognize anyone's rights to coerce others by means of democratic election, including myself, nor of the existence of the state itself. You are again making unsupported assumptions about me that appear rooted only in your own imagination.
>If you don't know what you are voting for, or you don't like what's on offer, that's on you.
I have no option to express my political desire to fundamentally be left alone in the current system, the best I can do is leave others alone and accept that, even if against my will, I exist within a system that believes it has the right to exercise force against me, up to and including lethal force, for any or no reason, at the sole discretion of murderers who've been granted permission to murder by other people.
Every act of social interaction I personally undertake is dictated by the ethical terms of the NAP.
Every act of civic interaction I personally undertake with the state is dictated by the terms of the team of professionally trained gunmen who will ultimately be sent to murder me for noncompliance. I pay taxes for the same reason I'd hand a mugger my wallet if he pointed a gun at my face and demanded it - nothing more.
You have the choice. Every time you choose to vote, every time you choose not to engage with your local representatives.
That's not even talking about the most obvious choice - jump on a plane and go somewhere else.
What you really mean is "Waaaahhh waaahhh I have never done anything resembling looking at the issues beyond accusing other people of doing what i don't know anything about"
Honestly, you genuinely sound like one of those libertarians that don't want to pay for water, then run out and start stealing from neighbours.
Or an incel that blames women for all the bad choices HE made.
My school even had a gazebo on the school yard so smokers didn't have to stand in the rain. They literally spent money to accommodate smokers.
Of course by the time I was there smoking on school grounds was prohibited, so smokers had to go just beyond the gate. Which students were not allowed to, but few teachers were willing to enforce that
Deaths are one problem, but they may also not be distributed evenly. Some cities or states have more issues on public transit than others. But also you can still be a victim of assault, harassment, theft, and other issues on public transit. Many of these issues also go unreported or don’t get counted in official stats if not accompanied by a formal police report or whatever. So it doesn’t tell the full story of what people’s real experiences are.
I live in Seattle and take the public transit almost every day since I don't have a car. The real experience which you seem to care about is that I haven't had any issues and most of the fear people spread around public transit is made up.
I always dread travelling by bus in seattle, waiting for what crazy will get on that day, and it affects most buses as they all go to downtown, where most of the homeless/addicts are.
I think people in this thread (and elsewhere) are using "unsafe" to mean "I feel uncomfortable" rather than "there's a serious chance that harm will come to me".
Law enforcement in liberal cities might overlook public urination or petty theft by the mentally ill, but they come down hard on violent crime. Truly violent people are not allowed to roam free on public transit. There's definitely some weird people though, and our society is segregated enough that most rich people probably can't tell the difference between a violent weirdo and a harmless one.
>It reminds me of the play on words they do in Chinese's social media to avoid this kind of censorship
A new way of speaking which removes nuance and is formed entirely of acceptable concepts and terminology as determined by the regime. We could call it newspeak.
I use a plugin on Safari called Vinegar, which converts all videos to HTML5. Because of this, I can just scrub right through an ad of any length. Only use it when signed out of your account, though, because they will eventually ban you if you do it while logged in.
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