They couldn't complete decades ago and lobbied for special protections then never even tried to catch up and fell even further behind. Now it's so pathetic a 100% tax doesn't even work anymore and total bans with made up excuses to justify it.

Remember the Trumptards trying to yell COVID is a hoax as they are on their deathbed and die.

The USA is #1 in cults and flat-earth believers etc. You've all heard about some of the psychosis in the USA; well, we don't have a monopoly on it even if we may lead in it.

The bottom 30% of the bell curve will fight for their own extinction. Also, they will blame "the other" for everything wrong in the world; for many, even when clear 1st hand experience says the opposite - it is far easier for them to escape into comfort delusions.

One reason they put up such a front is because they are so feeble; it's a defense mechanism. They will insist on paying more for the inferior option even after every excuse dies. We've all seen it, they change the excuse on the spot as it gets debunked until they make shit up (or retreat only to selectively forget and repeat debunked lies to themselves.)

The problem is that China has subsidized these vehicles to produce them below cost. This is a familiar tactic with Chinese manufacturers they've used in multiple industries to capture market share, bankrupt competitors, dominate markets, and then set prices to whatever they want. China is a communist country that views these companies as extensions of their government, which is outright hostile and militaristic. This is an attempt to ruin the industrial base of all competing countries which could challenge their military domination.

They want us to be greedy and only think "cheap cars! We must have them!" Meanwhile, our own automakers would slowly wither and die. The next time we'd need to mobilize like we did in WW2, we wouldn't have the industrial capacity of Ford or GM to build tanks and jeeps. We and every other country would be at the mercy of the CCP.

The problem is that China has subsidized these vehicles to produce them below cost. This is a familiar tactic with Chinese manufacturers they've used in multiple industries to capture market share, bankrupt competitors, dominate markets, and then set prices to whatever they want. China is a communist country that views these companies as extensions of their government, which is outright hostile and militaristic. This is an attempt to ruin the industrial base of all competing countries which could challenge their military domination.

They want us to be greedy and only think "cheap cars! We must have them!" Meanwhile, our own automakers would slowly wither and die. The next time we'd need to mobilize like we did in WW2, we wouldn't have the industrial capacity of Ford or GM to build tanks and jeeps. We and every other country would be at the mercy of the CCP.

Plenty of people want to go back in time! It's whatever the fashion is at the time; often throwbacks happen. Somebody with money who is clever could make it FASHIONABLE and people would go for it. Industry engineers people's behaviors plenty because most of us are just sheep. Proof of how gullible is right there in the USA's 2024 election. Look at how those rubes were all about going back to make America great AGAIN; just like fascist Italy also campaigned for.

Problem is the OIL lobby's plastics council will do a huge push against anything that significantly reduces plastic waste. Companies thinking price increases on packaging whine but they are always trying to increase pricing as much as they can get away with ... for their profit... but to manage an overhead increase-- they scream "it's impossible" they don't want to do that because it gains them nothing and they certainly can manage to overhead increase. (also not as bad as inflation is today; or the new owners wanting to profit from their new take over.)

Cancel culture's home has always been conservatism. So now some authoritarian freaks on the left want to do the same and the internet gives every freak a megaphone.

STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS. Ignore them all unless it's actively directly doing something bad.

Good work is good; if you can code, I don't care if you are a pedophile. code is code. I do care if you are let out in public but if you can do something good from within your cage, then I'm all for it. You can even make some money and live a good life. minus children and since you are sick in the head, that is a life sentence until we can cure you (and we can't.)

Racists are like flat earthers. Just don't let them decide anything where their beliefs come into play and realize they have a huge gap in their critical thinking which might extend to other areas. Possibly not smart enough to survive AI/robotics in the future...and naturally they will default to blaming others but maybe they will realize AI ate their job? and.. capital owns AI so you might need to team up with these sods to fight the robot army's owners stealing wages from everybody. but will they realize their retirement fund etc. is the fueling the whole problem so it's indirectly a problem we all contribute to.

Aldi stores only charge you 25 cents if you don't put your shopping cart away and most people do that and a quarter is only worth a penny adjusted for inflation.

Fuck the rich! Outside of the wage theft that makes them rich I don't care what some some tiny minority group does. The vast majority matters due to multiplication. The rich do not consume at a linear rate to their undeserved income.

Milk cartons are only decent if they are wax coated instead of plastic coated, even so, they are not as green as glass ones are.

Not that anybody would have thought seriously and got somebody in power to grasp it...

But instead of the HD transition pushed by industry lobbyists, we should have had gov scientists come up with a better system than industry hacks around MPEG2. We should have used the whole space for broadcast Internet Protocol and pushed for broad spectrum use. You pay the government for packets to be broadcasted rather than spectrum monopoly handouts. It no longer limits you to video ... or MPEG2. Not that we shouldn't have some standard video stream but that could be left to the industry to fuck over consumers like they always do but this would be more open since it would be internet based broadcasting. The whole thing could have supported cell the phone progression and hopefully eaten into the poorly managed cell phone network; with a two way communication mode.

Actually, blocking off bandwidth for development is something government could do while any company is going to make best with whatever they've got and not wait for the research.

The average American reads at a 6th grade level.
QED.

Glass and Aluminum. as good as it gets. already been done too. they even collected deposits! even if lazy people trashed them and didn't care about the deposit, they are harmless. The reason they can be recycled forever is that they are minerals which you can BURN without damaging them and all the impurities are removed (for the most part, one shouldn't generally allow mixing them with stuff that is difficult to separate.)

Everything needs a recycling tax, called a deposit slapped onto it which encourages recycling and keep some of that for difficult items that don't fully recycle (so partial deposit.) This would make full deposit items more desirable and cheap wasteful shit more expensive.

If I sold you blood diamonds; cheap, you'd probably buy them and not really care or just lie or hide that you got such a unethical deal. The reason it stopped was pressure on industry not because every consumer decided to become informed and do the right thing. (Also having Musk's parents flee South Africa might have helped a little... ok a bit off but look into it.)

So I didn't say fungi; whatever, doesn't matter to the point. People know what mold is and how it spreads easily and is hard to kill. If I said fungus Americans probably would just think of foot fungus and how uncommon that is... or maybe they'd care fearing it infects their feet?

Recycling plastic always was a scam. It barely gets recycled and at best it's like 6 times; the industry promoted it so they could shift the blame onto you and "personal responsibility" in a society which shirks responsibility probably within the top 10 of irresponsible. Contaminated plastic degrades recycling each time and is unavoidable and you can't clean it enough to fix that. As far as burning, some places burn it and burn it properly but MOST bury it!

Actually, you should bury plastic. I do. It's the cheapest way to sequester CO2. Burning it releases it and if it's not PLA plastic, it is not a carbon neutral source (oil) but bury your PLA as well.

Unless the plastic bottle ACTUALLY degrades safely, it should be banned. You talk of transport weight like that really matters but it does not and it does not compare. We are in the process of changing transportation anyhow which is a different problem; it's just a scam to change topic to something else that sucks and use that as an excuse for not changing something tangential and relatively insignificant...

Glass recycling is real. They used to have bottle deposit fees; which I've heard people claim is too complex to implement; totally unaware of history. Aluminum recycling is actually profitable. Aside from both being minerals that are harmless even if you didn't recycle them.

Tangential and relatively insignificant... how about the problem of man boobs? or increase in hormone messed up people and breast cancer? Plastic bottles give off chemicals that make all that worse. (ok BPA is gone but we got BPC which before studies prove it's the same they already switched...)

Most touch screen UI used only let you do 1 task at a time and lack the physical space to do much as well.

I took drugs for horses and got COVID and I didn't die! Social Media saved my life!
Thank you, Trump! Jail those scientists who forced Trump to shut down the economy!
We're #1! We're #1! invade Canada to lower my gas prices! Oh, and there are no Republican pedophiles so stop looking!

Why do we have to pick organisms that are the most durable and easily spread?? Does it breed with other molds?? Like how they infected nature with bio-engineered non-sterile plants?

That PET bottle in the ocean becomes food but the storage containers for food/medical or components in my devices that I would like to last many years, if not possibly a lifetime or two... can now rust away? One of the huge benefits and reasons for plastics is their longevity!

What's next? PE? Polyethylene? AKA the FOAMs insulting just about everything, like your house... which should last generations (outside the USA, where the average is 70 years because we dispose of them and that is why they are built for 15 years or whatever the liability span is... we even put low life roofing on new housing developments that last half as long.)

Makes me think of "The Andromeda Strain" sci-fi (book or movie form, check it out.)

The real problem is regulation and the corrupt selfish public (who allow themselves and their leaders to fall for every conman) who opposes regulation on cost grounds (if not that, they'll try everything else, including religion.)

YOU DO NOT ALLOW FOREVER CHEMICALS IN DISPOSABLE PRODUCTS!! That PET bottle will outlast your whole bloodline...in the blood of your decedents as nano plastic helping clog their arteries better; possibly increasing defects when their cells split...(but it'll take decades of extreme results before that is "conclusive" I seriously wonder if smoking could be hurt today given how gullible people are.)