There are counterexamples for sure but there are whole indistries that fell over to this pattern. E.g. TVs.

Unlikely. Their ODM bought them. Our home maps would however become part of their property. While I’m not happy about it, I think I prefer that than Amazon having it tbh.

Yet another example that the firms that actually make the things are the ones that matter in the long run.

Apparently Picea makes Roomba, Shark, Anker (Eufy). Maybe also some Dyson.

Way more than several decades. They startded in the South-East Asia more than a century ago. Latin America shortly after.

For most of the world, capital is a malign actor and the US has the highest concentration.

That’s what I meant - slower delivery over longer period. It’s why I said we didn’t give more from the get go. Which is likely resulting in more total weapons expended, along with the people firing them.

Oh and this is not just a European phenomenon which is why I’m not singling out the EU.

Yes. The way things ate going, at some point it may become less harmful and easier to deal with unwanted Chinese tech than American. Pay much lower profit margins as a bonus.

If we gave them more than a knife from the get go, they may have done significantly better. But then the war would have stopped quickly and a lot less shells would have been made and sold overall.

Europe probably has more raw capacity for power in terms of labour and technology but it’s much less capable of marshalling it towards a goal. The fact that you have to go through the market economy makes all the resources needed to exercise power more expensive. Russian shells cost 4x less than Europe’s. More centrally managed economies tend to outcompete at this. Having to go through the 27 countries democracies to direct it is another challenge. All Russia has to do is get several Orbans in domestic governments to keep the power level low. In effect Europe is less strong than Russia even though it could be much stronger. And this doesn’t stop with milirary power. Even simple stuff like tackling internal security from sabotage, economic security etc.

There’s also other structural blockers to projecting power, like the external energy dependence. Europe was critically dependdnt on Russian fossil fuels. Now a significant portion has been shifted to the US. As a result, uncle Donnie has a significant say in EU’s ability to exercise power over entities he likes.

This is why Kallas’es statements look more like stern finger wagging than anything real to anyone aware of these issues. Or Germany’s stern warnings to the Russian ambassador. Kaja gives good strong vibes to the EU citizenry but it’s not changing the material reality. Eventually it would stop working. My guess is that’s gonna happen quickly once uncle Donnie decides to go through with taking Russia’s reserve money under her nose and giving it to his corporations to invest in Russia, like they’re planning to.

It must mean that they don’t want to have potentially Western oriented republics on their land border.

I think a more material iterpretation is they can’t afford the loss of resource supply Russia provides them in the face of military threat from the US. Western oriented republics is an unlikely scenario to follow a power vaccuum left by a Russian power withrawal. Instead it’s more likely that local oligarchies take power. Conflicts could break out too. All that is a more challenging environment for keeping the resources flowing into China, especially during an armed confrontation that’s cut off supplies by sea.

At some point we’d have to start importing TVs from the other side of the Great Chinese Firewall to avoid unwanted US tech. It’s getting ridiculous.

Aren’t we subject to the embargo? If we are and we did this, I imagine we’re gonna get hit with a new round of sanctions. Perhaps we could next year when Trump’s sanctions popularity has tanked so hard he can’t use them as leverage anymore. Maybe it could be done as a matter of humanitarian relief. I don’t know. This shit is so fucking sad.

Yeah this whole thing looks like a 2-for-1 deal to topple both governments after starving their economies for a long time. Especially given the hard-on Rubio has for killing the Cuban Revolution. And then install resource-extractive governments in their place of course.

Yes and my point is that even if the corpo pays, which it absolutely should, that’s not the end of the economic effect when that resource is used to the limit at the moment. We will end up paying too.

The demand for construction workers? If so, it could, if there’s enough unemployment. Otherwise workers from some other industry would have to shift to construction. Creating a shortage in that industry. Switching industries is a more difficult process than getting an unemployed worker to work in construction though. But if there’s already a labour shortage in the construction industry, then that answers the question. There isn’t enough unemployment or shifting from other industries to fill the demand. And there seems to be one.

If there’s underemployment in construction or higher unemployment, then yeah, the construction labour market would likely expand without much effect in housing and infrastructure.

When unemployment is low in the construction sector, we can’t have them pay. When they pay, they’ll outbid us for workers who were previously building homes and public infrastructure. We’d either have to outbid cloud for these workers, or we’d pay by having higher housing prices and crumbling infrastructure, which incurs other social costs. Real resources are finite. The only way for us to not pay is for them to not build the power plants and datacenters. In a truly democratic system we’d be able to say no. In this system, capital outvotes us.

E: I’m not arguing that the corpos shouldn’t pay. They should. I’m arguing the economic effect doesn’t stop with that payment and we’re still fucked.

I think you should read the latest US NatSec strategy that came out two weeks. Also the leaked bits about pushing several countries to leave the EU. The US and RU have a common interest in the EU breaking apart. One of them has much more resources and leverage than the other. For example a lot of the Russian gas was replaced with US gas. And that’s just one point of significant leverage.

Clearly I addressed a specific part. One that has an outsized effect over the German system via its political system. If you can’t see how those other aspects can be tackled inside Germany (and the EU) and why you can’t rely on a conpetitor to stop, I can’t help you. You’re arguing to get an attacker to stop instead of tackling the vulnerabilities. That’s not how security works.

Just in case anyone else is reading this and got confused - Israel and US are also actively running disinformation campaigns in Germany today. So if for some reason Russia stops doing it today, the problem remains as the US and Israel would continue and they don’t have Germany’s best interests in mind.

Also if you’re going to pretend to engage in good faith, it helps not to downvote the person you’re replying to.

E: Downvoting harder with your alt accounts isn’t doing you any favours either.

It’s also the only way to save it from destruction driven by its major shareholders.

Exactly. This is like a treating one infected wound with topical agent while having sepsis. Uh, if Russia stops spreading fake news on Facebook, what about the US, or China, or Turkey, or Israel. The common variable is Facebook, Meta making money off this activity and the activity being aligned with Meta’s anti-regulation interests. Social media corporations are the systemic issue here. Legislate responsibility for moderation for corporations operating in Germany and this shit is gonna drop off a cliff, by any actor.