hiphopafrica

I don't know if I'd go as far to say its a tool but it certainly plays to their ends. Gender is potentially the most powerful divider being that its close to a 50/50 split.

Sciency

I feel that 3rd wave feminism is used as a tool to break down the family unit and discourage young white males from creating stable households. Strong family units promote a learning environment, whereas a fractured family unit perpetuates anger, financial slavery, and a particular world view. It is most definitely in the interest of big-govt proponents to keep the most powerful american demographic angry at the wrong things and distracted by the tedium of 9-5 jobs.

senpaithatignoresyou

I thought this way for a while. Then it occurred to me: Single people are too broke to buy nice things.

Sure, we see the occasional child free guy, with a really nice car, but all in all they don't have nearly as much spending power as their married counterparts.

They also don't buy big houses, and take out mortgages. So banks HATE single people. They are actually quite scared now, and are subtly cutting their earnings because of the forecasts. It is also why the lower interest rates that the fed has been pushing out have not magically fixed the economy. If people where married, it would have spurred home buying, but there are too many single people living in urban areas, so it has not done much.

So if their goal was to break down the family unit, then they succeeded. One of the things that scared me the most from the intel community was "sometimes the worst thing you can give your enemy, was exactly what they want. Then when they can't cope with it, you sweep in and take more from him then you could, if it does not destroy them first."

If they wanted to break down the family unit, they got what they wanted, and it is costing them lots of money. It may also be costing them power as well.

Sciency

I agree with 99% of that. I still feel that the debt that would have been placed in houses and cars, has just shifted to student loans and credit cards. They're definitely losing money in the long run, as less physical goods are being produced, but I feel their power (in the form of financial slavery) has never been greater.

senpaithatignoresyou

they're definitely losing money in the long run, as less physical goods are being produced, but I feel their power (in the form of financial slavery) has never been greater.

I disagree. You can foreclose on a house, and on a car, but you can not foreclose on an education. So what happens when they can not pay their debts? are they going to jail? what happens when they declare bankruptcy?

I believe that the establishment is scared. That they got what they wanted, only it is destroying them.

I suspect that this is why we are seeing the huge shift with the establishment towards trump and his populist message. They realized that we can not sustain a service based economy, and that we are being nickle and dimed without hidden costs associated with outsourcing. It is going to get crazy next month when the panama canal expansion opens up, and the west cost loses roughly 4 million jobs associated with the shipping sector.

Sciency

Perhaps you're right. In fact, I hope you are. My fear is that those holding the student load debt have no intention of collecting, and simply want to cripple the most academic among their generation. My worst fear is that they hope for a resurgence of indentured servitude, and are using debt as a placeholder.

This is the first I'm hearing about the panama canal business. Do you have a link to some discussion on the topic? I feel I need to get educated on this before it goes down. If CA wasn't already fucked, they certainly will be after another 1-2% of their population enters unemployment...

senpaithatignoresyou

http://micanaldepanama.com/expansion/

It gets me, this is the biggest engineering project of the century so far, and people are oblivious to it.

There are millions of jobs associated with shipping in California alone. From loading and unloading the ships, putting things in the warehouses, the trucks, etc etc.

Before the expansion, shipments from china would be unloaded at California and trucked to distribution centers on the east coast. The west coast unions owned america.

http://www.noodls.com/view/A53D3D09D4279EDC09F7DC8FEA35841086C872F3?7892xxx1423159855

Suddenly those jobs are going to shift to the east coast, where all the distribution centers are, and months of lead time will be removed. The kicker is that these are right to work states/ anti union states.

It will not be pretty when it hits. Ever look at the economy of LA? Ever wonder what happens when you remove one of the key employers in a city?

Sciency

Wow, you weren't kidding. That is a massive undertaking. And this is the last stretch of an 8 year project? How is this not bigger news? Do you feel the US media ignoring this to minimize the potential panic?

Here are the obvious pros/cons (for the US), let me know if I'm missing anything here:

Pros:

-Less stress on US roads by trucking

-Less congestion on US roads

-Less land-based pollution

Cons:

-Massive shift in employment from west to east US

-Massive increase in unemployment in the land shipping industry

-Significant economic shocks, (initially) local to the coastal western US

-Significant shift in political funding as unions dissolve/restructure (my or may not be a con, depending on one's political leanings)

-China gains selling power as it becomes even cheaper to buy chinese goods in the eastern US, which holds 2/3 of the US' population.

Funding:

Out of the $5.25B spent on the project, $2.3B in loans come from:

Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) $ 800 million European Investment Bank (EIB) $ 500 million Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) $ 400 million International Finance Corporation (IFC) $ 300 million Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) $ 300 million

Some other thoughts:

I wonder if self-driving trucks might eventually bring down the cost of land shipping, making west coast shipping relevant again.

I wonder if china has a hand in any of this, or if the project is simply mutually beneficial for the above banks and china.

I can't help but think this might have something to do with the recent spike in chinese acquisitions of businesses/land on the US west coast.

This is bad news for the US... Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

senpaithatignoresyou

yeah, almost everyone is oblivious to this.

I suspect that this is why Donald Trump will become president. Notice how he timed his "end nafta" stuff around the year that this is opening up. People do not understand just how big of a deal it is. The PAN ex shippers hold a good 13 thousand more conex boxes then the older ships do. So the decrease in lead time as well as economy of scale is too good.

The good news, is that raw materials will become super cheap in the future, so manufacturing will have some help, so long as we have someone who will push for renewed manufacturing growth.

Sciency

It just occurred to me that train cars are about to be worth next to nothing. That means a whole lot of cheap scrap iron is about to hit the domestic market. I'm not the biggest trump fan, but he is definitely the better option to deal with an economic problem like this. And for the record, I'm pretty sure trump is gonna win. I guess that wall is gonna be pretty cheap to build if they just pile up dead freight cars... haha

I hope this country can get its import/export numbers out of the red soon, otherwise we are about to become old news really fast. Thanks again for bringing this to my attention, I've already talked to a half dozen friends/family about this, and they seemed to understand the implications right off the bat.

senpaithatignoresyou

Indeed. I almost used che, because they love that monster, but i do not like mentioning that tyrant.

I find it hard for this movement to exist on its own. More concerning, is how the big names somehow end up with power.

The digra stuff gamergate found intrigued me. Here is a think tank that started off innocently, but suddenly became a mouthpiece for lunatics. If this was only one incident, i would have written it off as a coincidence. IT was not.

You then see these same big names in that movement, move on to prominent censoring positions in social media.

At first glance, it appears that they are unfairly promoting an idea, while censoring any other idea. When we go deeper, we find that they are ruining the core of whatever social justice movement that they have hijacked. That they are doing long term damage and discredit the movement, its ideas, and in the end destroy it.

they are "useful idiots" as the soviets would call them. I suspect that this is what has gone on. That various religious political groups have engineered and funded this movement to destroy the liberal groups that attacked them so hard from the 70s to now.

I come to that conclusion, based on what happened to atheist+, and all the other atheist movements. They never once talk about taxing the churches, a key atheist topic. Now it is feminist garbage.

senpaithatignoresyou

I agree. One of the things that these twats demonized was "talent". Some people are really good at things, they can change the world with their skills and ideas.

In a meritocracy, these guys get rich and are able to take charge of things. This is not a bad thing.

Communists and other socialists do not like this concept. That the best can make it to the top unless artificial means hold them back.

I would argue that third wave feminism has become a new artificial method to hold people back.That is demonizes ideas like merit and skill, and creates fake bogeymen to distract people.