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mrpoops t1_j26uyag wrote

Why build a 2000 mile long city when you can just pretend it’s there?

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AadamAtomic t1_j27g15o wrote

Because the U.S loves oil and gives them ungodly amounts of money to do anything they want.

They could even crash an airplane into some Towers or something if they felt like it....

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C9Fox1 t1_j28goao wrote

Or because the Saudis trade their oil in US dollars instead of chinese yuan?

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cream_top_yogurt t1_j2a9oe1 wrote

It’s a little more complicated than that. We don’t NEED anyone’s oil, we’re a net exporter nowadays… but we do like stability and Saudi Arabia helps keep things stable in an unstable part of the world.

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MrMeesesPieces t1_j2bipcs wrote

We have a ton of natural gas but not sweet crude. That’s why we still buy tons of foreign oil

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[deleted] t1_j28qggn wrote

[deleted]

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ecksate t1_j292qb7 wrote

It's weird how conservative politicians understand the long game when it comes to corporate wealth and power, but when an opportunity comes to sell out the countries future, suddenly they want short sighted populism that disregards fiscal conservative policies.

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mayfairmassive t1_j27vfjg wrote

Except the US doesn’t buy any oil from Saudi anymore. We export oil.

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SaltyShawarma t1_j27y4dj wrote

This is false. We import a terrific amount of oil. We also export a terrific amount. Saudi Arabia is one of our biggest suppliers. It all has to do with the type of oil.

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KruppeTheWise t1_j28ogrd wrote

And it wouldn't matter one bit if not a drop of Saudi oil ever made it to the states. While they support the petrodollar, while energy is traded using America's currency, the world props up America.

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Rain1dog t1_j28r8y8 wrote

Love that Petrodollar, thanks World!

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KruppeTheWise t1_j28w62z wrote

It's gonna be interesting to see how the hegemon survives the green transition. Maybe now we are in the information age, the world reserve currency will be used to trade microchips? I'm sure the US has no competition there....

China Raughs in South China Sea

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OniExpress t1_j29n9xn wrote

My dude, what green revolution? All evidence points out that the people actually in control of the situation intend to ride things out to an environmental apocalypse. The 1% are convinced that they can ride it out comfortably until after they or anyone they care about dies peacefully in a pile of hookers and blow.

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rubywpnmaster t1_j29ndxy wrote

Yes we outfitted our refineries back in the early 80s to move towards the production of heavy-sour which at the time seemed to be what the world would be mostly producing. All that easy to suck up light-sweet was already sucked up so the theory went.

Now our refineries like to have a decent amount of heavy sour added to their feed to operate at peak efficiency. Over the last decade fracking has started to produce just insane amounts of oil in the US. But because most of it is light sweet oil it sells for a high price internationally to countries that didn't invest so heavily into refining heavy sour.

This doesn't mean that we aren't using the oil being produced here... And there are plants being put up in LA specifically to refine the lighter oil.

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MechanicalBengal t1_j278hza wrote

I think they’ve realized that when automation starts taking hold in a big way, they’re going to have a ton of folks with idle hands… and the royal family is not looking to repeat the French Revolution.

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Andyb1000 t1_j288mnj wrote

It’s a shame we’ve spent since the mid-00s in western countries demonising people receiving benefits/welfare. By mid century I believe many people will be displaced from the workforce as professions become increasingly automation.

People left the fields to go to the factories in the Industrial Revolution but the ability to create an unlimited artificial workforce is a paradigm shift we have not seen.

We need to be preparing ourselves for large swathes of the world population not working and find meaning and purpose from other activities.

I’m sure that I’ll get replies that it will take time, the US, China etc. will be first… what about the developing world… yes they will be generationally behind the curve.

Why is it important? You think places like the US has civil unrest now when people are working three jobs with no healthcare to cover rent payments? Wait until your McDonald’s is nothing more than an automated burger and fries vending machine kitchen with one or two employees to clean up and there is mass unemployment.

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KSRandom195 t1_j28nork wrote

Robot tax.

You have to create the incentives that discourage worker replacement with automation. A robot tax is one answer that can lead to funding a UBI

It’s a delicate balance because you want to encourage the automation but discourage full worker replacement, at least until you get enough of a robot tax you can fund a UBI for all the displaced workers.

The UBI is needed because the economy doesn’t work without the workers receiving income. So if the workers don’t receive income then they will not buy stuff in the economy, so the robots won’t be needed since there will be no one to buy the stuff they make.

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youbetca t1_j29bipa wrote

Or implement universal basic income & raise corporate taxes to pay for it.

It should be fine for robots & AI to replace human work, and increase human leisure time.

The benefits of robots & AI shouldn’t just go exclusively to the wealthy. This is 100% going to happen and we should start getting prepared for it now.

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NightGod t1_j29h3el wrote

>Or implement universal basic income & raise corporate taxes to pay for it.

Isn't that basically the same thing as "robot tax", just different wording?

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Caffeine_Monster t1_j2bdaoo wrote

Nah, the difference is pretty important.

Because if gov has lots of tax money, who decides where it goes? The corporation with the most lobbying power?

Ultimately the problem will be that no matter what you do, you probably won't get it right unless you effectively cap wealth (because realistically you can't make a judgement call on what is too much / too little tax).

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DealMeInPlease t1_j2aizqe wrote

There is a problem in that human people WANT/NEED to be doing something of value (as defined by themselves) -- leisure funded by a robot tax will create unhappy people / an unhappy society

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HappyCamperPC t1_j2be4fn wrote

Kids and retired people seem pretty happy though so it's not work they need to make them happy. A cleaner would probably be happier not working but pursuing a hobby or their own project.

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Andyb1000 t1_j28snat wrote

For me it’s as simple as charging robots the same income tax as an employee. In my work, we account 40% additional salary for “on costs”. These are typically the wrapper that goes around managing employee; employee benefits, welfare, pensions, continual professional development and professional services like HR to deal with employee issues.

Any business that goes all in on automation is already making a 40% cost saving versus us bags of mostly water.

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Versability t1_j28x5xq wrote

Amazon and Walmart are the two companies with the most employees in the entire world as far as I’m aware. It’s a pretty large margin too, as nobody but these two companies employs over 1 million people.

If automation replaced human workers, wouldn’t both of these companies have fewer workers than everybody else instead of more?

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123hoe t1_j290cni wrote

They deliver with drones and some of the warehouses already are replacing sorters with robots Amazon could fully autonomize tomorrow if the govt relaxed fsd requirements and hopefully give ubi or nationalized necessities

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Versability t1_j296rwi wrote

Lmao There’s no regulation stopping Amazon from being fully automated. What is this FSD you speak of?

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123hoe t1_j2971h6 wrote

Full self driving. Which there is regulation against and which driving aka transporting the products is a huge part of there buisness. Fuck is you talking about

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TheAmateurletariat t1_j298v6p wrote

Afraid it's not that simple since robots are not the same as humans 1:1. This would be easy to circumvent by creating 1 "robot" that could do the work of 10 people.

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KruppeTheWise t1_j28povt wrote

What you need is successive waves of a virus that kills off all your weak and old, useless slaves cough citizens that expect these kinds of benefits/welfare.

Keep a small group of fit ones as your consumers to buy your yearly "upgraded" gadgets and vitamin waters and import immigrants to do the service work. As you take away the benefits and welfare, the immigrants won't protest because they never even knew they existed.

There's a fallacy that since WW2 and the short period of financial reckoning millions of military trained men returning could quietly, purposely force from their governments everything will just get a bit better by default every year. For a select few, sure, for the majority of us cost of living from groceries to housing has decimated the existing middle class and it's attainability for those trying to move up.

But lets all spend our time complaining about clickbait headlines and why my sexism/racism/ageism/incelism/disability/LGBQT2OWL is the one that deserves the most attention while they quietly undermine all of us in the underlying root cause of these issues, wealth inequality.

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weizXR t1_j27v3g7 wrote

Can't wait until they find out what large stretches of mirrored walls end up doing in a desert..

There will be a line of burnt/melted animals along the sides of the thing -_-

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