ninthant
I feel and share your rage about the inaction by the American mainstream left.
My hunch that they’d change their tune before allowing their country to engage in outright war with Canada is nothing more than combination of a hunch and naive optimism.
We certainly can’t bank on my hunch — we need to prepare as if you’re correct.
A couple decades ago I used to have an hour long commute and would listen to The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti almost every day.
She would interview people who would go on with their talking point nonsense, and I'd whip myself up with frustration about what they were saying. And then Tremonti would just... say what was in my head, and make the person actually respond to reality and stop just spouting their rehearsed bullshit talking points.
It was so breathtakingly wonderful, and it happened time and time again. I miss that so much.
We need biased reporters. Biased towards reality and truth, biased against lies and empty slogans. Challenge the mistruths and misrepresentations made by almost any media-savvy participant, be it political or corporate or anything else.
I would LOVE to see HBC reborn as a costco style membership club that sells good quality Canadian products at reasonable prices, and is incentivized by the membership system to focus on providing customer satisfaction not short-term profits.
I've given up Costco for the boycott, but it hurts so much buying overpriced stuff from the grocery cartels. Imagine if a reborn HBC could fill that role?
These types of claims are incredibly difficult for a layperson to evaluate. There are at least two explanations for charging very little profit as is suggested BYD and similar companies are doing now.
Incumbent monopolists will absolutely use prices to bully competition out of the market so they can enjoy a longer period without pricing pressure later. This has been well documented across many industries. However it's also a normal occurrence where a disrupting upstart will apply a low profit margin or even operate at a loss in order to build market share and achieve higher efficiencies of scale.
I am at least mildly concerned that the Chinese EVs seem better fit the mold of the disrupting upstarts, and not that of the incumbent monopolists. If they are serving a lower-price-point aspect of the EV market that the traditional manufacturers are not filling -- that is a good thing. This is a role that many of the brands now considered mainstream once filled when they were newer to the western markets.
However, your points towards forced labour are absolutely on point. This is a greater issue that affects all trade with China, and it's one that we have largely been ignoring for a long time. Every time we buy something made there with it's unknown providence, we are participating in a system that must be described as evil. I wouldn't want to drive one either.
But personally I believe the US would descend into civil war before this happens
Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for this possibility, starting yesterday.
We can use the money we were pissing away on F35s to create a national corps, who would be trained in the types of guerrilla warfare we’d need in this scenario. And be cross-trained to respond to climate emergencies such as floods and hurricanes and fires. And help build out infrastructure to shore up our east-west corridors and access to the north.
We can see from their Russian masters how an American invasion would take.
They’d try to grab and hold strategic areas and resources, while using missiles and aircraft to cripple the economy and infrastructure and spread fear nationwide.
However, we can remember that the US has tried to invade many other countries and they’ve failed every time. And while we may never have the tanks and aircraft to match them in open warfare, even much poorer countries than Canada were able to successfully repel the American forces.
And in this scenario we’d have a massive untamed border to use to make counter strikes, and would likely get significant military support from allies around the world and in the US as well.
So it would be monumentally devastating on both sides. It would be a catastrophically stupid endeavour. Which doesn’t rule it out, they have extremely stupid people in charge.
But personally I believe the US would descend into civil war before this happens, with “blue” states having suppressed voting rights trying to secede.
When it was just about tariffs I cut back on purchases from American-made goods and from American companies.
But once the seriousness of the sovereignty threat became more apparent I moved that to full scorched earth on my shopping lists. A company like Costco that treats its employees decently well? Nope, even they get the boot. Not just groceries — American media products, household goods, service companies, tech products — as much as I possibly can.
In the end it’s surprising how little they are actually needed.
Respectfully, I don’t think you want to go down this path.
Having a third party setting up a complex software with no commitment for ongoing maintenance leaves you in a bad spot when something breaks or needs updating. And even if this software is great; all technology stacks eventually need some maintenance.
So I think you need someone from your community to step up and be willing to take this on with at least an intention of being there for ongoing maintenance and support. Or, paying for a commercial service who will do this for you.
If you find that person, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll give them some pointers about how to get this up and running and answer some questions about best practices and such. I’m not familiar with Friendica but the setup seems relatively straightforward if you have a web host who supports running Docker containers.