When we were selling our first startup, we hired an "expert" to value our company. He started the discussion with "what is the valuation you're looking for?"
Then he started playing games with his "model" in Excel.
The difference between industrial capitalism and financial capitalism is Excel.
What I don't understand is the concept of NATO or the EU: why would a group of countries willingly band together as "happy vassals," as the Belgian PM put it.
> What I don't understand is the concept of NATO or the EU: why would a group of countries willingly band together as "happy vassals
NATO: Russia is a threat to both Europe and the US, lets band together to make sure we can fight them.
EU: Europe keeps fighting wars, lets make our economies more inter-dependent so that doesn't happen as much.
For NATO, I can see the happy vassals thing (and that's what the Belgian PM was referring to), but can you explain who is the overlord in the EU example?
The EU would be very very different if that were the case. Like, since the UK left we'd have a common corporate taxation system. Prior to that, we'd have had a military since the 70s, and only one stock market (in London, obvs) and all data-collection would've been made illegal.
(This is mostly satire, even if I think 2 of the 3 second things were and are great ideas).
The EU as a group really doesn't seem to have a lot of political will / momentum. They make a lot of statements, but that's it. I wish they did, but they don't seem to.
Ah, so the daily LARGE protests, in Venezuela, against his kidnapping are not indicative of "the vast majority of Venezuela".
But the celebratory pics, which were claimed to be from Venezuela, but were actually from Miami and elsewhere (including, I kid you not, an attempt to pass off Argentine's celebrating a Copa America win) ... that is indicative of "the vast majority of Venezuela"?
If I were smarter, I might start to wonder why, if President Maduro was so unpopular, why would his abductors have to resort to fake footage - which was systematically outed & destroyed by independent journalists within 24 hours? I mean, surely, enough real footage should exist.
Probably better not to have inconvenient non-US-approved independent thoughts like that.
do you have links, all the chatgpt and gemini references I've seen show the large protest happened 1 time, not daily. And beyond that, the chatbots suggest it's overwhelming support for the arrest.
There are no news sites claiming large daily protests that you claim.
I mean, come on, we kidnapped him. Yes, he was arrested, but we went into another sovereign nation with special forces and yoinked their head of state back to Brooklyn.
To be fair he isn't legitimate head of state- he lost an election and is officially recognized as a usurper and the US had support of those who actually won.
Soke people argue Trump isn't a legitimate head of state. (One of those people is Trump, since he says he was already the president twice.) Should Xi kidnap him?
Large amounts of people call Joe Biden's election illegitimate. You could even say thats the official position of the current government. Would his kidnapping by a foreign nation be okay with you too?
I never liked the Paul's and their opinions, but I must say that they usually speak according to their principles, rather than make up principles to fit what they want to happen.
To me, that's the distinction between political opponents I can respect, and, well, whatever we're seeing now.
The people of the US mostly wouldn’t like it the people of VZ mostly did and consider Maduro a thug who lost and stayed in power not their president. Ideologies like Paul have trouble with exceptions to their world view.
Cuba would be much better off if it wasn't for crippling sanctions imposed by the US.
Genocide by denial for decades.
To give Trump credit, at least he's open about his intentions. Much like a certain Austrian painter from the 1930s; he too was open about his plans, and no one took him seriously until it was too late.
The embargo doesn’t cover food or medical supplies, and Cuba trades with Europe and China. Cuba sucks because its government is terrible. If they could trade with the US they’d have almost nothing to trade. You don’t seenBYD electric vehicles from China there for a reason.
This works for some people. But for me, Facebook introduces nothing negative because I don’t follow any ragebait stuff, and instead get updates from people I (somehwat) know, and bands I’m interested in.
When we were selling our first startup, we hired an "expert" to value our company. He started the discussion with "what is the valuation you're looking for?"
Then he started playing games with his "model" in Excel.
The difference between industrial capitalism and financial capitalism is Excel.
reply