iie [they/them, he/him]

before you praise America or Europe, remember where that wealth comes from

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

Russia is communist

$30.50 seems inaccurate. If you’re tipping 20% then you ordered at least $150 worth of food lol.

that’s stupid, then, why would you bother to make a comment like that. Who gives a shit?

hexbears are abrasive because we expect most liberals to be venomous and dismissive toward us and not listen to anything we say, even if we operate in good faith. so instead of wasting a lot of energy on a response that will be thrown back at us like dogshit, we’re flippant and cursory. for my part, I actually still respond in good faith most of the time, but I pick my battles.

what the fuck does that even mean, “left wing version of /r/TheDonald”

like the donald but believing the exact opposite things?

I have a different answer than blakeus12

the two factors are

1. An ambient sense of how unreceptive the instance is toward us. If the distribution of responses we get is skewed too far toward “I don’t give a fuck what you have to say, I’m not reading that, fuck you you disgusting tankie,” that’s a reason to not federate. And I mean… I’ll be the first one to admit hexbears can be annoying and too eager to dunk on people, but on the flip side I also think our views are often misrepresented and demonized, and it’s frustrating when people won’t even bother to understand what we actually think or why.

2. If any of our users feel harrassed or unsafe, even if the culprits are a small minority of the instance, we are liable to defederate. And this shouldn’t be taken personally! We all know lemmy still has limited mod tools. But we prioritize each other over federation, we’re a close-knit community who have been together for years.

when a majority white community mocks a chinese man by comparing his appearance to a yellow bear, it’s a little weird

I think competition — actual competition, not “5 megacorps own everything” competition — can be useful in some cases, but keep in mind that competition does not necessarily incentivize good products. With food, for example, competition incentivizes addictive, unhealthy shit. With social media, same thing. With labor, it incentivizes exploitation, because whichever company squeezes the most work out of people for the lowest pay outcompetes everyone else. You can ameliorate these shitty incentive structures by putting workers and communities in charge of production, rather than owners and shareholders who want to maximize profit at the expense of any other metric.

deleted by creator

and then folks ask why people don’t like you

I know why you specifically don’t like us lol. I recognize your username from the constant long arguments with hexbear users I see you get into.

…but whatever fits your narrative, I guess

obviously a mistake?

i mean it’s basically a trolley problem. whether or not we blame someone who was born into naziism, at some point we have to stop them before they hurt others. and if the nazis are armed and organized, we start running out of peaceful ways to stop them.

one of the features rich capitalist countries share is extracting trillions of dollars out of poorer countries every year lol

“Doctor, tell it to me straight… can you treat my cancer?”

“Nah, let’s wait until it metastasizes and becomes inoperable”

“the Ukrainians” are not a monolith. You may be aware that a civil war raged for 8 years before Russia invaded?

Study: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens:

From the abstract:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

further down:

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

What is it, like, 70% of Americans want single payer healthcare?

You ever notice how America seems unable to meaningfully damage China’s economy?

This is because China’s economy is integral to everyone else’s. You can’t really hurt China without hurting yourself. Their annual trade volume is in the trillions of dollars.

China paid a price for this leverage. The price was allowing capitalists to operate within China. That is how you do business with the rest of the capitalist world.

They crossed the median line

idk dog, the wording in the article leaves some weird wiggle room.

Of those aircraft, the ministry said 10 had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, or entered the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, or ADIZ.

I’ve never heard of the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation. It’s hard to find info about it.