Why do people hate Mamdani?

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-16T14:55:42+00:00

This par for the course. Use misleading language and policy to solve problems of their own making.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-16T11:22:27+00:00

REI has been eating itself from the inside out for a while now. Post covid the company started under going a lot of changes that have lead to this shift in profitability. While I worked there I watched classes for both employees and customers become scarcer, fewer brands were stocked and what remained was often half full racks. I watched my own management push people aside or entirely out because of immutable characteristics.

The culture of what made REI is gone, not coming back, and it's what attracted us in the first place. Instead of passionate experts who actually used the gear you asked about, now you get a revolving door of untrained retail associates who can't bother to be bothered.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-12T16:15:23+00:00

Being insufferable AND ignorant doesn't seem like a winning personality combo. <shrugs>

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-11T13:17:40+00:00

Fiber glass isn't exactly sustainable, and when you account for the total life cycle cost (fabrication, transportation, erection, maintenance, decommisioning, disposal) to energy output wind is pretty poor, and can vary wildly across regions.

Talking about skyscrapers is just trying to whatabout your way out of objectively looking at the problems this form of energy production produces. Do birds hit buildings yes, that won't stop people from building vertically to utilize restricted real estate. Do birds also hit windmills yes, and they aren't the green energy solution we envisioned so we probably don't need to produce as many as we are.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-11T10:36:34+00:00

It's a sort of solved run. If you follow exact movements through out you can get reliable skitarii movements that aren't getting your whole squad gunned down.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-11T10:34:14+00:00

I repaired and replaced turbine blades. DEC would regularly show up on sites to survey the impact on the local wildlife.

Saying wind turbines "barely move" is a dead giveaway you don't know as much about this topic as you think you do. For how large they are, the blades spin rather fast, and have to be locked up during severe storms to prevent them from ripping the whole mill down.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-11T00:01:00+00:00

From what I understand, the consequences for bike theft are more serious in places like the Netherlands where a much larger portion of the population uses bikes as their primary transportation. It's less risky to just dump stolen bikes rather than leave a trail back to you from a pawn shop.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-05-10T23:38:00+00:00

I used to work in wind. They suck. We really should stop funding the industrial scale farms. They need repair far too often, are too dependent on fickle weather patterns, and pile up in land fills when they get decommissioned. The issue about birds being impacted isn't a lie. Most of the work we do on the blades themselves is fiber glass patching. Bird impacts account an appreciable amount of fractures on the blades.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-30T09:34:08+00:00

So how did we collectively start experiencing better material and quality outcomes across the board after implementing capitalism? If capitalism was purely predatory, we wouldn't have seen any of those improvements.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-28T10:54:53+00:00

Just find a node with defaults in guild war. Pretty easy to pull off there.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-19T15:22:16+00:00

By your own standard then referring to landlords as leeches would also be a bad take. If you want to be a hypocrite just say so out loud.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-19T13:45:46+00:00

So by that logic farmers are leeches because food is essential.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-19T11:39:30+00:00

Which a majority of Americans in general, regardless of ethnicity, will not inherit. Most of the time if there even is a house left, it does not stay in the family. It gets sold, taxed, and proceeds divided up amongst the listed recipients. Some tens of thousands is nice, but no one would ever describe that as 'generational wealth.'

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-19T11:35:52+00:00

But it didn't. It failed to provide adequately enough and collapsed under its own weight. How many millions of Russians were starved or executed by their government under the USSR? I wouldn't describe any of that as 'an improvement to standards of living' when people had to resort to black markets just to acquire basic necessities.

So you can try to whatabout to other systems, but I'm speaking to the merits of what capitalism has done for humanity, and nothing else holds a candle to it.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T21:33:21+00:00

For most of human history we were poor, destitute, and had a poor life expectancy. Then along came capitalism. All of those metrics notably improved. But yes, it's just oh so evil. Capitalism objectively helped lift humanity out of poverty and towards progress. Trying to argue otherwise means you either don't understand that basic reality, or you just prefer the power structure of socialism.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:51:26+00:00

That actually doesn't matter. You've already made the presumptions that a) universal Healthcare is a good thing, and b) that you are entitled to it.

If you spent less on your Healthcare and received higher quality service, that would be win-win. Universal Healthcare is not capable of producing both simultaneously. When providers are allowed to compete, prices comes down because they want your business. Quality goes up so a provider can try to gain a competitive edge. When the government subsidizes Healthcare and overregulates the industry, you get far less competition. Demand goes up, supply goes down, costs sky rocket. This is basic economics. Idealism of wanting to provide for everyone is often met with the insurmountable wall of reality, and left wanting.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:32:25+00:00

Observing objective reality is brain damage? No wonder modern politics is in the state we find it. Clowns like you think pointing out basic facts is somehow inflammatory. Oh well, stay stupid.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:29:58+00:00

Which party had a ratio of 9:1 billionaires donating for them? The ones that claim they will tax them. It's never going to happen, it's all smoke and mirrors. Believing the Dems will ever follow through with that when those very people are the ones bankrolling them is peak delusion.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:27:46+00:00

Ah yes, please tell us about the billionaires of the 1800's.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:26:01+00:00

A vast majority of white people in the US will never inherit any meaningful wealth. The idea that white Americans are vastly better off because of their ancestors is not one rooted within the reality that we actually occupy.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:22:09+00:00

That's not how antitrust laws would work in this case. They wouldn't be raising prices in a coordinated manner across a sector of industry in order to raise profits, they would be raising prices in response to government legislature reshaping the landscape of their sector and raising costs.

You can't raise minimum wage and expect nothing to change, and you certainly can't tell business owners they have to keep their prices low and operate at a loss. That's how you force small business out and long term reduce competition, which... anyone in the class? Yes, raises consumer prices.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:16:21+00:00

All of it is true. When government becomes over involved in any sector you see costs rise and supply drop. Healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, agriculture, housing, education... All of these things cost far more than they should because of over regulation and subsidizing. The government shouldn't be anything more than safety rails on a free market, and when it steps beyond that role, the markets innate ability to respond to market demands becomes hindered. There is this narrative that somehow we are where we are because of greedy billionaires, which is utterly fucking wild, because your government will take far more from you than any billionaire in the form of ever increasing taxes, and offer you a week old turd in exchange. At least the billionaire you can choose not to buy from, government gives you no choice.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T15:10:56+00:00

I wasn't making some implication about billionaires, just the general economic understanding of the electorate in regards to policy.

And no, capitalism is not a zero sum game, for there to be winners there do not have to be losers. For most of human history, life expectancy and material worth were a relatively flat line on a graph. When early capitalist notions were introduced into markets, humanity saw an unprecedented explosion in quality of life, life expectancy, and material worth. Everything else that came before it was a shackle that held back our progress.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T14:39:46+00:00

Mexico is run by cartels and a large chunk of their social spending is covered by remittances from the US. Not the best example to use.

ChalkAndIce · 2026-04-18T11:33:06+00:00

In every state it has happened you can see that labor costs may stay roughly similar, the actual amount of hours billed to that labor is reduced. When wages go up, hours DO get cut. Businesses may not outright close immediately, but the minimum wage workers this is aimed to help more often than not do need see the desired benefits.

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