It does work, coops do work and survive and are more resilient to downturns than privately owned businesses.

I feel the reputation of the US was more that they can’t imagine themselves being lowered to this, rather than that they wouldn’t do it.

That would literally be fraud.

Also stupid because the sales tax would be more than the rebate I imagine.

That’s what I was saying by “no primary effects”. I’m not saying that an attack on academia in the US is not an attack on academia everywhere. I’m just saying that the comment seemed to presume that all research everywhere is primarily funded by the US.

No, but he is one, so by definition he is hoarding money. Being a billionaire more than offsets any other societal good you might be doing.

We don’t remember Hitler for his good infrastructure policies either.

My point is, give people a chance at beating the stereotype.

Okay, but how do we avoid these situations? Let’s say we’re in this big alliance, and Kazakhstan becomes a big trading partner in an effort to rid itself of corruption and Russian influence.

Russia keeps trying to influence politics in Kazakhstan, more and more overtly, and when the Kazakhs elect a government who are fully committed to join our alliance, Russia invades.

Do we (the EU) defend Kazakhstan, which would be a proxy war in your definition, as without us they have no chance of even staying independent so the power imbalance couldn’t be greater?

This is not a hyothetical, but a close parallel of what’s happening in Ukraine by the way.

Because Ukraine is fully capable of defending themselves from Russia as long as all of its allies don’t bail on it.

When did they lose the war though?

Thanks nutsack

Yes. You’ve fucked up so hard with electing Trump than even Canuck Trump is against you.

The world is not responsible for fixing US politics.

The goal is not to influence red vs blue but to show both our people and yours that we can fight back.

Trump is President in New York just as much as he is President in Kentucky. And as long as New York has not seceded, that will not change, and even if it did, it’s not a free ticket to even having trade relations with the rest of the world.

The guy committed election fraud. That’s the long and short of it.

You think Tesla is being responsible

I burst out laughing at “heavy police presence”, those guys look heavy alright.

Of convenience. It’s more like both hate the US. There is a possibility of aligning China to the EU, even against Russia.

After all, given that Russia got us back to “spheres of influence”, who says they get to have one and we won’t just partition it between the EU and China?

The thing about it is that while democracy is not perfect and can be abused, autocracies like Hungary and Russia are broken in so fundamental ways that it does not even compare.

I mean, yeah we have AfD getting a lot of votes. Russia had a rogue general lead his troops to the capital in an attempted coup.

Okay, but let’s say one of our allies gets regime changed by Russia for aligning with us and not them. Do we help them? If we do, how is that not a proxy war?

BTW my opinion is that there are just proxy wars, like Ukraine.

Ursula is a muppet, but it wasn’t her decision alone, or even at all.

Or the people orchestrating this want you to sell the dip.

It’s very much all made up at this point.