First, the US government has bailed out the US auto industry repeatedly:
1. 1979, Chrysler bailout, 1.5bn, plus looser credit and trade protections that benefited Ford in particular and helped it avoid formal insolvency
2. 2008/9, GM & Chrysler bailouts, 60bn+, plus regulatory flexibility, Fed credit facilities, and supplier rescue programs that benefited Ford in particular
3. 2020, credit and payroll support, 10s bns+, plus Fed corporate-bond purchasing programs, which kept credit markets open (Ford raised $8 billion through bond sales in April 2020 thanks to that liquidity), payroll tax deferrals, and supplier support programs

Second, I’m not trying to claim the US government *controls* the US auto industry, I’m saying that the US auto industry has been *more dependent* on the US government for bailouts than the Chinese auto industry has been on the Chinese government. These are not equivalent statements, and you’ve just chosen the most fuckwitted interpretation you possibly could, of what I said, to make yourself feel better, instead of engaging with what I said substantively

Third, You’ve actually built not one, but *two* strawmen into that oil wars point.

Firstly, I didn’t say *only* U.S.-made cars used oil. My point was that U.S. geopolitical and military actions to secure Gulf oil flows directly supported the petroleum-based economy as a whole, in which the American auto industry was a core pillar. Keeping global oil plentiful and cheap has been a recurring strategic objective since at least the 1980 Carter Doctrine, which *explicitly stated* that the U.S. would use force if necessary to protect Persian Gulf energy supplies. That policy underpinned decades of intervention, including the 1987 Operation Earnest Will (reflagging Kuwaiti tankers) and the 1991 Gulf War, both designed to ensure oil supply stability.

Secondly, I never said the Gulf War was *only* about oil. Wars are always multi-causal: regional stability, alliances, deterrence, and economic interests. But to deny that oil was a central factor in the Gulf War is to ignore the historical record: policymakers and analysts at the time openly cited the need to protect energy markets and the “free flow of oil at reasonable prices” as a national security priority.

The point stands: the U.S. has repeatedly used military force to secure oil supplies that sustain its economic model — a model built around cheap energy and high automobile dependence. Recognising that link isn’t reductionist; it’s just historically accurate. If you want to challenge it, you’ll need to address the evidence rather than arguments I didn’t actually make.

Turn off AC comments again you cryptofucks, 99.9% of AC posts are fucking garbage

Unless you're an Uyghur Muslim you probably won't be enslaved there, you can put your money into foreign banks and then you will still have benefit unless the risk catches up to you.

Capitalism inherently means literally only one thing, capital controls the means of production. Who has the capital? The wealthy. Who therefore has the right to control? Yeah. That's right, the wealthy. Capitalism IS about the rights of the wealthy.

Capitalism is about control of PRODUCTION, not about control of stuff you bought. That is orthogonal to capitalism. You have to have the right to own property for capitalism to exist but that doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want with it.

Rent seeking is orthogonal to capitalism as well, because it's not about production. Hell, it's barely even about ownership, since you can sublet.

TL;DR: All the stuff you think is capitalism is really about a specific form of capitalism with other things added on. Capitalism is NOT inherently about free MARKETS. You can have mods on capitalism to try to make it make the freest possible markets, but they aren't the soul of capitalism. Rich people controlling stuff is.

Ryanair have two motivations here.

1. Steal your private data, spam you with notifications, the usual app stuff.
2. Make more people pay the check-in fee.

They are always up to stuff like this. The other very common one is rejecting bags that are within their size limits. They have special devices that the bag must fit in, but the dimensions are not the same as the ones in their Terms & Conditions. The device has rounded corners that reduce the volume a little, for example.

This is ignorant. There are lots of reasons why consumers would have to buy a product which is hard to repair. For example there's no credible alternative, use of a specific product is all that's supported, it's mandated by an employer, the manufacturer has driven competing manufacturers out of business, etc. This is why we have antitrust and warranty laws.

The very essence of capitalism is that those who control the capital control the means of production. Everything else you think is necessarily part of capitalism isn't except for private property ownership, as you can't have capitalism without that. The right to purchase a competing product means absolutely nothing when there is no competing product, when a specific product can be mandated, when the alternate products cannot reasonably be maintained or there are deliberate incompatibilities, etc etc. It's really truly sad how few people around here know what capitalism is, means, and does.

This is the problem right here. Why is Google not considered an accessory? Google received consideration to disseminate it and the either employed no or insufficient oversight. This is not simply user-provided content which was posted without their cooperation.

In the US it primarily works the other way around, the automakers intervene in the government by having their lawyers write legislation and then paying congresscreeps to sponsor it. That's how we got the regulatory landscape we have with e.g. the chicken tax, and the differing standards for light trucks.

Government intervention in the USA is kind to the big 3 automakers and primarily fucks over consumers, like how California is now making owners of heavy diesel RVs get smog tests every year even though their contribution to emissions is barely measurable. It costs each owner $250 to get the test and another $35 or so in filing fees to accomplish... fuck all. Plus it creates an additional trip which starts with idling for at least fifteen minutes (or up to half an hour, depending on the ambient temperature) so the wet sleeved diesel engine can come up to temp before I set off. My neighbors must really enjoy that. Also then there's the fact that DPFs reduce soot but a) increase the production of PM2.5 soot and b) increase CO2 emissions. DEF+SCR good (except that the DEF injection systems are typically pathetically fragile) but DPF is bad but still mandated.

Just get a vpn and torrent away.

Capitalists are always looking for ways to make sure you don't have a choice, or at least not a real choice.

That's why companies often find that the kind of consumer lock-in they do in the US doesn't fly in the EU. Just because a consumer has a choice not to buy an Apple phone, doesn't mean that Apple can't remove choices from them about where to buy apps from, or to switch to Android and lose all their purchased apps and accessories.

Why not? I'm curious. I'm not doing it from my work PC inside a secure facility. Should I be worried about a 0-day in Chrome?

OTOH, there is no way in hell I will paste a random string of text into a shell. Then again ... I've probably run a few 1-liner curl scripts to install software I just heard about :-(

Why the hell would someone go open a terminal window and paste random shit in from a web page?

Because it leads them to what they want?

You can advertise "free pr0n!" and have people copy and paste random text into a terminal window if they believe it'll get them to what they want. Your random script can even pop open a website to make it look legit.

It's the whole Dancing Pigs means of security. If you offer a user a video of dancing pigs, they'll do anything to see it.

I hope he does better than Christopher Mitchell, from Maas Biolabs.

Are you fucking kidding?

Tell me this: which government has actually funded bailouts of car companies repeatedly over the past 40 years: the Chinese or the US? The Chinese government has been clear for years that it wants a thriving EV sector and that requires consolidation in the coming years.

The projection is just off the charts.

It is the *US* auto industry that has been propped up forever by the US government, including fighting literal wars to keep the gas flowing.

Indeed, lack of production has been a limiting factor in their exports so far.

Also the practice of pre-registering cars is commonplace in Europe. The dealer buys the car from themselves, registers it to themselves, and sells it "second hand" to the customer with only delivery miles on the clock. My current car was supposed to be like that, but they just registered it to me so it was brand new, but for the pre-registered price.