Sorry, but as Eastern European, we begged for NATO membership because of constant (>200 years) Russian occupation hazard. We only care about America as a strong ally (of many) in the NATO group, there is no imperialism, direct, indirect, effective or otherwise interprettable. It’s a purely defensive pact with all its tenets clearly and publicly laid out.

We could not fight back alone and we wouldnt be able to, because just as to Ukraine and as to Nazis, the amount of meat Russia (yes the whole country, not just Putin) is willing to throw into the meatgrinder is incomprehensible.

Nice edit. I keep talking about European climate from a European perspective.

Importing less directly increases GDP. One would assume it would have 0 impact on exports, unless other governments suddenly are bitchy and angry that they cannot export to us (see: China).

I would be fine joining a petition forcing companies to at least go inline with inflation with their wages, but you did not propose it, you are just trying to be angry at something I didn’t say.

What the fuck. I keep saying I hate large companies, and they are literally abusing people by not raising peoples’ wages over 10 year time-frames.

People definitely should ask to be paid fairly. What is the point otherwise? To roll over and get fucked by any company willing to accept your skillset to make them insane amounts of money?

What the fuck.

It’s just, if you talk about finances driving your decisions, you must talk about fair wages and the current state of things. Otherwise you’re ignoring the full picture.

I blame large companies much more than I blame people not doing unions, but unions is the only possibility for people to fight back long-term abuse for a job they either perceive as acceptable, or not changeable (for whatever reason).

I am sure when you go to work and don’t get a raise for 10 years, you would think twice of the importance of worker unions in large companies.

The imagination that prices would skyrocket is naive, I think. Yes, there could be a period of high prices, and people would buy less, and more focused on what we need (in the specific case of extreme import cut-off), but the import tax is already around 20%, if it was manufactured in Europe, that is already going directly into the profit margins.

How is it a position of privilege? It would mean that manufacturing in Europe would gain a lot of income, provide more lower skill jobs in Europe, consolidate the economy. Reduced shippings costs would directly go into the European economy.

I would like there to be more unions, otherwise large companies even in Europe are too powerful and too dehumanizing. If you don’t talk about this, it will only get worse.

Buying hand-made clothes from individual artisans is actually cheaper in Europe than well-known brands, but it sadly requires more research and time for searching.

I can agree that finances drive our choices, but it is a bit insane to say the only solution is to keep the global trade going and only buy from China. Surely it is possible to produce locally and pay people fair money (per European lifestyle) while not going bankrupt, otherwise, how does it even make sense to assume China (and other Asian countries) will just keep producing items for cheap?

There is a more fair price to pay for products, if you don’t buy from china. Investing into local manufacturing makes sense. And people don’t ask for fair wages, because people I talk to haven’t had a raise in 10-20 years, even though inflation went crazy over the past 10 years.

There is plenty of institutional knowledge about ICE available in Europe, albeit at a premium price, because people buy more than repair old, out of only financial concerns (and money going somewhere else and not into peoples’ hands). All of it seems a little bit simpler (even though made incredibly difficult due to companies’ approach to reliability, repair, and marketing of “this is incredibly complex, don’t touch”) after you have a engineering or STEM degree of some sort.

Just because the cheapest come from somewhere beyond the sea, doesn’t mean there aren’t local equivalents. I just bought missing motorcycle parts that are manufactured in Poland, and I do prefer German, Polish manufacture, because it’s inherently more reliable and doesn’t have the added guess-work for Chinese manufacturing. And yes, Europe does manufacture microchips, buttons, wires, and other components that (among many things) make new nuclear plants work.

I can agree that some materials are only available in specific regions, and so global-ish shipping would never die (and doesn’t need to), but over-reliance is a long time debt that should go away.

People also do this all the time for one-off, functional prototype/exhibition items. Of course it’s expensive to manufacture one due to the handmade nature and research time, but once you make one, you can refine the process, and/or build the mass-manufacture molds.

That does look like an interesting read, but reading the abstract, he goes a bit fanatical, in that he tries to smelt the metal himself. The metal industry (and plastic) is alive and well in Europe, you can buy prepared metal, wires, microchips, buttons and other needed materials easily, down to plastic beads you can put in a mold (or more likely, just 3d print these days), given these, I don’t see having a problem building a functional, albeit less aesthetically refined toaster in 2 days.

It’s much more approachable to talk about specific items, and to some degree we can extend this to everything, with more and more details

So what couldn’t I manufacture in a fully equipped metal shop? Given materials.

I am not missing it, I am saying, from my perspective, this idea of it being so complex it can only be manufactured somewhere in China, is wrong.

Hell, my engineer friends, given material, and their tools, could do it in 2 days by reading blueprints and latheing from scratch.

Building something incredibly specialized like a computer chip fab or a nuclear plant (due to extremely hand-made nature and safety requirements) might take a decade, but for something as well understood and much more approachable as cars, 5 years for building a hangar and getting the required equipment is quite reasonable. One could even look at Tesla for how it does work.

The more you work with cars (or me specifically: motorcycles), the more you understand they are quite simple. The extra stuff added on top is usually just touted as an “incredible advancement”, but really amounts to decades of strong marketing. In many ways, simple ingenious solutions these days are axed and replaced with even simpler mechanics and engineered electronics, just because the manufacturer can get away with it and hide it, for some extra money.