> If the world is governed by rules, why does the United States maintain a considerable number of military bases around the world, far exceeding the total number of military bases of all other countries combined?
It's the other way around. Rules are tools of peace. No peace, no rules. But if you want peace then you have to be ready to wage war. It's called deterrence and the EU is learning this just now, again. That's also one reason why the USA has been called the world police... because it was true.*
If nobody enforces the rules any more, things break down and we close in on violence. It is plain to see on the global scale, e.g. Russia's war against Ukraine, and also the domestic scale, e.g. ICE's violence against their own citizens in the USA.
> Why is the American military budget so much higher than the combined military budgets of all other countries?
The US military budget is about three times that of the EU or China's, or about a third of all military spending on the globe. Obviously, this is much higher than any single entity, but not all other countries combined.
* Frankly, being the world police has had a lot of benefits for the USA. Why they are abdicating this position to run a protection racket instead is for wiser people than me to answer.
You're confusing rules with treaties, agreements, and balance of power.
Yes- When there is one super power in the world and it says if you don't behave a certain way we're gonna bomb the heck out of you, or boycott you, you get a certain behavior. Even then you might get some actors (like North Korea, or Iran, Yemen, Russia, China and more) that have no problem openly defying and challenging the super power to some extent.
When the balance shifts and you have other blocks with more power that feel comfortable in defying that super power (like China or Russia today) then you see that changing.
There are no "absolute" rules. There are power dynamics, countries, interests, politics. Rules can exist only within a structure that can enforce them, like a country.
> if there is a shortage of doctors, why are we trying to solve that by training AI models modelled on influencers that spits out (hopefully improving) advice at 10x the rate of a human doctor?
The crucial part is the training. AI may very well be the solution for underserved communities, but not if it is trained on internet rubbish. Train an AI on curated state-of-the-art, scientific data, imagine the expert systems of yore on overdrive, and you will see much better results, including knowing when to call in a human doctor.
Isn't EUMETSAT data usually under CC-by-SA 3.0? So all you have to do is to register with them and get your client ID for API access, or are there more hoops to jump through?
This only holds for companies that do not have to comply with some regulation or standard, e.g. ISO 27001, to do business. Especially infrastructure, banking, and defense tech have high compliance requirements that also, and sometimes esp. cover software development.
Maybe I'm not getting you right, but IMO it hasn't? I, as a customer/patient, just don't weekly converse with my MD about small issues, and frankly, they have better things to do, for example treating sick people.
Instead I use the health benefits programs of my health care insurer. My insurer has an interest in prevention, so I can get consulting for free (or very low fees), and even kickbacks if I regularly participate in fitness courses and maintain my yearly check-up routine. Now, I live in Germany and it probably is different in other countries, but it just makes economic sense from the insurer's point of view so that I would be surprised if it were very different elsewhere.
> Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this.
It is debatable if everyone but John Bolton and Donald Trump knows this. After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering.
Anyway, it is smart policy to expect the worst and plan for it instead of being surprised by another insane president voted in by the people of the USA. Call it risk management if you like. It would be negligent of the leaders of the EU and its member nations to not account for that. The EU has to reduce dependence on unrealiable trade partners, this is true whether we are talking about warmongering Russia, dictatorial China (probably the most reliable of the three!), or unpredictable USA.
So, let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst. The EU can't change it if preparation harms US economic interests in the long run. That's on Trump.
They won't. This is the same line of people that voted for Reagan and Bush II. I used to be one, most of my family still is. Whatever Democrat gets elected (if we have reasonable elections) will get the blame from them and it will be used to fuel the election of the next populist.
This is the mistake a lot of people made with Bush II and Trump I, thinking that "this will all go away" when the man at the center goes away. It won't, no man rules alone, they represent a large population of anti-intellectual isolationists who are not going anywhere. At best you can hope that the intellectuals will govern in a way that helps everyone next time they get a chance, leaving less fuel for the next populist wave.
> After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering.
For sure -- the bottom 41% of economic literacy are so misinformed that they have no clue what they're talking about. But those voters aren't picking the nominee for President from among a circus of general morons, the party elites are, and the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age. Without Trump just flailing around like an idiot, they'd be content to do things that preserve the status quo in a lot of areas. They pander to the unsophisticated Trumpists where needed, but it's lip service, since a lot of them, for instance, love open borders because of how it depresses wages and gives them a compliant workforce. They talk a big game about the debt or the deficit, and also work to make sure we increase defense spending and funnel as much healthcare spending as possible through a bunch of private insurers who add a huge margin to our healthcare costs.
> the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age.
They said that about Trump I. The Republican Party elites have power, but they don't have all power on the conservative side of American politics. They contend with the Religious elites and various conservative cultural elites and the libertarians and so on. Trump didn't get elected by accident, there are a lot of people who love what he is doing, what he represents. They will happily vote for "the next Trump" when the time comes, and their elites will bend the Republican or the Democrat elites with tax cuts just as easily as they did for Trump.
> the party elites are [picking nominees], and the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be claiming the rich Republican elites are not happy with Trump's economic policies. But then why did they support him so much during the reelection campaign and continue to support him throughout the Presidency?
It is like in organisational error management (aka. error culture), there are three levels here:
1) errors happen, basically accidents.
2) errors are made, wrong or unexpected result for different intention.
3) errors are caused, the error case is the intended outcome. This is where "bad people" dwell.
Knowing and keeping silent about 1) and 2) makes any error 3). I think, we are on 2) in TFA. This needs to be addressed, most obviously through system change, esp. if actors seem to act rationally in the system (as the authors do) with broken outcomes.
> I hope you are using KDE Plasma instead of the default GNOME which is going the Microsoft way.
That is a disingenuous statement.
Gnome is just as open source as KDE is and there are several forks for those who don't like the direction on Gnome. At no point does Gnome force ads on you, changes default apps under your butt, or takes a nap before opening a menu.
Sure, Gnome is not for everybody and you may dislike the direction it is taking, but saying it is like MS Windows, or the community project is like Microsoft is dishonest and insulting. I expect better behaviour from a fellow FOSS enthusiast.
And yet Gnome and KDE have no troubles doing just that if you activate the corresponding plug-ins for the respective search engines (Tracker and Baloo). How you access them is a matter of taste, but both integrate into your runner dialog or launch menu, if you wish.
Well, obviously, your car can count cycles on the electromotor moving the wipers. Then you apply statistical wear and tear, maybe even geofenced, and your car orders new wipers. Same with tires. Simple as pie ;)
It's the other way around. Rules are tools of peace. No peace, no rules. But if you want peace then you have to be ready to wage war. It's called deterrence and the EU is learning this just now, again. That's also one reason why the USA has been called the world police... because it was true.*
If nobody enforces the rules any more, things break down and we close in on violence. It is plain to see on the global scale, e.g. Russia's war against Ukraine, and also the domestic scale, e.g. ICE's violence against their own citizens in the USA.
> Why is the American military budget so much higher than the combined military budgets of all other countries?
The US military budget is about three times that of the EU or China's, or about a third of all military spending on the globe. Obviously, this is much higher than any single entity, but not all other countries combined.
* Frankly, being the world police has had a lot of benefits for the USA. Why they are abdicating this position to run a protection racket instead is for wiser people than me to answer.
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