At least the well off have something to give for xmas, or just to look cool in.

Would you rather pay a tariff's cost or pay more for products produced domestically? We will see how every company deals with this.

Tariffs are often presented as a shield for domestic industries, but economically they are counterintuitive: by limiting foreign competition, they reduce the pressure on local companies to innovate, improve efficiency, or lower costs. Without that competitive drive, businesses can stagnate, producing inferior goods and services while charging higher prices. The irony is that the domestic consumers tariffs are meant to protect end up paying more for worse products, while the broader economy loses out on the dynamism and progress that open competition usually sparks.

Suddenly reshaping supply chains to respond to tariffs carries significant risks that ripple across the economy. Companies may be forced to abandon established, efficient networks in favor of hastily arranged alternatives, which often means higher costs, logistical bottlenecks, and reduced reliability. These abrupt shifts can disrupt production schedules, strain relationships with long-term suppliers, and erode quality control. Worse, the uncertainty discourages investment in long-term innovation, as firms divert resources to short-term survival.

When unemployment is already low, suddenly finding enough workers to reconfigure supply chains in response to tariffs becomes nearly impossible without driving up labor costs. Firms must compete for scarce talent, often retraining or relocating employees, which adds further expense and delays. At the same time, the abrupt shift discards sunk costs. Prior investments in established supplier relationships, infrastructure, and logistics are thrown out before they would have been depreciated. These wasted resources are replaced by new costs for recruitment, training, and building fresh networks, all of which inevitably flow into higher prices for consumers. In effect, tariffs don’t just disrupt trade; they force companies to burn past investments while layering on new inefficiencies that must show up in the prices of goods.

It'll be at least half of that in ten years.

The Zoomers have no interest in cable TV.

> Why not just build the proper infrastructure with what we know works?

I tried to do this locally. The government allows the pole owner (electric or telephone usually) to charge $50/mo/pole to the startup that wishes to hang wires.

The owner pays $5/mo in property taxes to the town.

There are exceptions for large corporations that are in the state's good graces.

It's just to keep competition limited to the cartel.

Short answer: corrupt government.

This was my first thought as well.

Such marketplace confusion!

Lol. What a piece of garbage at that price.
For some yarn.

If this were the case they would not permit manual selection of the rapid acceleration mode.

A guy I knew had an early Model S.

When he wanted to impress me with the acceleration he tapped a couple settings on the screen to put it into Ludicrous Mode

This was around 2013 or so.

I'm not seeing how this is a problem.

I have a V6 and a V8 truck and both need a manual low gear selection to take off like a rocket. OK, the V6 not so much but the V8 can spin the rear tires in 2WD mode.

I don't let the average drivers in my life use it.

They would hit a tree if they were given a Tesla that was always in Ludicrous Mode.

I'm not sure if Wire has new management but I just recently learned they've gone fully open source, are working on federation, and are using an RFC-specified tree-based efficient group chat encryption algorithm. RCS is eventually meant to adopt the same algorithm.

Folks using Telegram Groups (which are unencrypted, actually) might have a look. Yeah, somebody needs to run a server if you don't want intelligence agencies to provide one for you.

I uninstalled Wire years ago when they wouldn't take privacy seriously (yeah, I filed a bug) but it seems like a second look is warranted.

Just 3.4bi?? Ford and GM received way more than this just in Brazil alone.

>Now all those houses have residents.

Sorry, what?
New home prices in China fell by 0.22% in May 2025 across 70 major cities, the largest monthly decline in seven months, while existing home prices dropped 0.5%, the steepest fall in eight months. Year-on-year, residential sales by value dropped 6.1% and real estate investment plunged 12% in the same month. Lol, yeah, housing is going GREAT in China!

>It's not the same kind of economy as we have, or the same kind of culture, and people somehow are unable to understand that.

No, its a command economy, and that has always proven to be shitty.

It's not "ordinary folks" - it's the willfully ignorant. And Yes, I have no sympathy for them.
They probably shouldn't be on the internet, in fact.