These are not people ripping off TTD to make a buck. If you absolutely love the game so much that you spent 20 years modding it, you're going to have some respect for the original and the publisher and are probably glad they are interested again.
I get that it's not the same Atari as it was 30 years ago. But I liken it to you being a Beatles cover band and the estate of John Lennon reaches out to you, you're going to treat them with some sort of respect.
See also what happened with Tron 2.0, where Disney unexpectedly published a software patch 20 years later that obsoleted the community work necessary to get it running on modern Windows 10+. The community was ecstatic, not offended, that the IP owner had randomly decided to contribute. Sure, a lot of their work was either disrupted or nullified, but that's not someone 'ripping off' the community's investment — that's someone validating the community's investment. Given how other companies act, 'validation and cooperation' after a long drought of inattention is perhaps the least likely outcome here. It's so nice to see it.
(Of course, in an ideal world, companies would not be wholly inattentive to older properties — but that's basically unsolvable without economic-level solutions for the problems of capitalism, so I don't have any ideas specific to video games to offer.)
As a sidenote, this whole situation implies just how important platforms are.
Nothing about OpenTTD has changed. You can literally just go download it off their website for free - same as it was 20 years ago. And you can add it to your Steam library just fine. It's only been on the Steam store for 5 of those years.
But the open internet is dead now and just being "de-merchandised" from a platform feels like being relegated to the dark web (maybe something the open source community doesn't quite fully appreciate).
> You can literally just go download it off their website for free
That's cumbersome. The main benefit of platforms is comfort. Steam takes care of installation and updating, while often also offers some access with the community. Open internet has more choice and liberty, but for the price of more work and annoyance.
That the main reason why all big platforms succeed and the small platforms fail. Comfort is just too valuable.
OpenTTD has an automatic update mechanism already and its installation is as simple as could be.
Steam succeeded because of its store, which still has the best prices on the market. That’s their original moat. Their current moat is sunk costs. People have thousands of dollars in their Steam Library. At this point Steam’s advantages as software are negligible, especially considering its poor performance.
>Steam succeeded because of its store, which still has the best prices on the market. That’s their original moat. Their current moat is sunk cost.
Then how come epic games store is not able to get a foothold for years despite offering literally free games? Not even children which are most likely to use it because of Fortnite use it for anything but that. Steam is objectively the better store and game launcher regardless or price or "sunk cost".
Open internet is dead only to those that don't take the effort to discover. Otherwise it's still as open as it always was.
Since there was an internet to speak of, there always were and still are vast amounts of people unaware of stuff that exists, limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of desire.
That is true to some extent. However, let me ask you one simple question: how would you try to search for something if you are not aware of it's existence? In other words, how people that are not aware of existence of open-source projects (such as OpenTTD) are supposed to discover them if they're not searching for them on purpose (which is impossible given that they have no clue about their existence)?
Of course there will be some ways like social media or something else. But that question is what seems to worry many people in our case, in my humble opinion. Remember that most of the planet's population is not even aware of existence of open-source projects and open-source concept itself. So how are they supposed to discover it if they don't know about it? When it's present on platforms like Steam and GOG, it helps to spread the word, but when it's not... Well, I guess that seems to be a problem for some people.
> how would you try to search for something if you are not aware of it's existence?
You're asking a leading question. The verb you're using here is one specifically indicating interaction with a "platform" (a digital aggregation of information). The answer is you don't search anything, you completely change your epistemic and interaction model. Instead you build a social web of people who have their own social webs, and you share things you've made and things that have been shared with you. This is your "platform".
> how would you try to search for something if you are not aware of it's existence?
How are most games on steam found? I kinda doubt all people find them through steam own mechanisms. I even doubt the majority find them this way. Gaming has multiple sources of information, be it news, social media, influencers or cooperations. Video-content is probably the biggest source of being discovered for most games these days.
there are more platforms for searching for games: youtube, google, chatgpt... it's not so dire that if steam bans you then there is no way to find a game
> In other words, how people that are not aware of existence of open-source projects (such as OpenTTD) are supposed to discover them if they're not searching for them on purpose (which is impossible given that they have no clue about their existence)?
This question tickles me. In the before time, something would be so good you were compelled to tell someone about it.
Sriracha, Costco are brands you likely know that dont advertise, and somehow got popular. In the 90's there were bands that were massively popular with little to no air play, and less promotion (Fugazi is a great example).
My introduction to their Sriracha was in 1994, when the Puerto Rican cook at the Italian restaurant I worked at sent me to Stop and Shop for the "rooster".
Till hosing their relationship with Underwood Ranch (their sole provider of chili's) this was the only product in the marketplace (much like ketchup was always Heinz for a time). Absolute market dominance wrecked over not honoring your handshake deal with your ONLY supplier.
The latest batches by them are green, and no one wants them. The underwood version of the product is taking over --- it has a giant dragon on the bottle now, and what I look for now rather than the rooster.
Right. This is a chicken-egg problem. We also need a replacement for google search; Google ruined it, on purpose. We are being made blind (not totally blind, but dumber, and then blind).
By googling "best open source games" and finding blogs and forums that talk about them. In fact googling that exact phrase returns as its first search result a Reddit thread in which OpenTTD is one of the first games listed.
It's not like you can discover it on Steam any easier.
Of course, searching for information itself is also a skill, but it is a truly essential one for the modern world.
Technology Connections referred to this as “algorithmic complacency”, young people don’t like Bluesky because they have to decide for themselves what content to follow instead of a default algorithm feed
I use a similar argument to those who say that gaming is dead. Sure, if you're waiting for $AAA_DEVELOPER to change, it's probably dead, but you don't even have to look that far to find amazing games everywhere in indie and AA.
Sadly indie developers are only just starting get into my preferred genre. I am excited to see how a number of upcoming titles turn out, but for the time I’m stuck waiting for $AAA_DEVELOPER to change.
I’ve had half the mind to just try my own hand at game dev again.
Although I agree on the general point, it's technically not true that the internet is "still at open as it always was". Nation states are increasingly putting up barriers and filters, and (pushed by commercial interests) forcing people to identify themselves.
Short of developing psychic abilities, how would you then address the discoverability problem without relying on a third party?
Forums, search engines, social media, and link aggregators are all third parties with their own ranking. Nobody outside of a handful of small-web hobbyists have put a "cool links" section into a website since 1997.
This is classic engineering missing the forest for the trees.
The answer to your question is: same as we always did before! Do you talk to friends? Colleagues? Family? You definitely chat with us here on HN. All of these people share things with you constantly.
There's a funny obsession in tech circles to gather all the information they can as quick as possible. I much prefer to optimize for the quality of information I'm ingesting.
> The answer to your question is: same as we always did before! Do you talk to friends? Colleagues? Family? You definitely chat with us here on HN. All of these people share things with you constantly.
So, in your opinion, we can cut out the reliance on third parties by relying on third parties?
There’s always a relationship aspect in discoverability. Unless the set is small, there will always be intermediary nodes in that graph that will connect consumers and producers. But there’s no need for it to be a mega tech company. Radio DJs help with discovering musics. Books club can help with recommending books.
Doesn't need to be, but most traffic is driven by search. I reckon 2nd most common is influencers, and I don't know if that's an upgrade (even easier to buy out).
This is as good an argument as saying that Americans with unhealthy diets bear sole responsibility, ignoring the massive corporate efforts to convince them of the healthfulness of highly processed foods. While, obviously, individuals have ultimate responsibility for their actions, ignoring the concerted efforts to influence those actions through psychology, marketing/ads, paid “experts”, paid influencers and celebrities, lobbies, blah blah et cetera.
When I started using the internet, if I asked someone what the internet was I was unlikely to get any answer at all. It was new. I had to define it for myself. Ask a 6 year old what the internet is. It’s YouTube. TikTok. Roblox. Experiences that are designed to keep them there. It is obviously more difficult for an individual to engage with the open web than it ever has been (for those with access at all).
>ignoring the concerted efforts to influence those actions
Ignorance isn't the point. The issue is that it's your responsibility to stop them. the buck always stops at "I". Are they just going to stop themselves? Is your neighbor going to stop them for you? If so, why should she if you don't?
As Kant said, enlightenment is getting out of your self inflicted tutelage. When is it self inflicted? When you have the reason but lack the courage to act without direction from someone else.
Yes, there's influencers and lobbies but the solutions are still one search away. Even Google doesn't hide the alternatives from you. And sure we can force feed every American veggies and force install linux on their computers but that'd defeat the point.
People who are not aware of a topic are not lacking courage for not engaging in it. Being damned without awareness of salvation is more of a St. Augustine thing. And Kant said my ancestors were less than human, so fuck him.
who isn't aware? If we were in the 80s and you lived in a village without an internet connection, sure but today everyone is aware of the means to liberate their computing environment or whatever else is bugging them. That's not an excuse any more for virtually anyone. The average American spends, not metaphorically 'literally', actually literally five hours per day on their smartphone. If you can doom scroll for five hours you can learn how to use linux, or get on a treadmill to lose some pounds.
the reality is people have the option to choose between comfort and autonomy and they voluntarily choose the former and call people annoying who preach about internet freedom and privacy. Which they might very well be but it also makes it clear they know and don't care.
Wait if it is your responsibility to stop corporations from doing bad things, why are they still doing them?
I didn’t realize there was an individual to talk to about this but, while I’ve got your attention, frankly for the sake of mankind you need to do better at this. They are running wild out here
> It is obviously more difficult for an individual to engage with the open web than it ever has been (for those with access at all).
It’s very easy. If you’re a producer, you maintain a separate presence outside the walled platforms. If you’re a consumer, you look outside the walled platform for content.
>It’s very easy. If you’re a producer, you maintain a separate presence outside the walled platforms.
I want to try one day. Steam's pricing parity adds friction to that, though. I can't reward people for venturing to a place where they own their software, and that seems to be the only real way to move many.
I don't remember how I first heard about slashdot, but I know I discovered debian and enlightenment through it, and I would assume I discovered openttd through it.
Perhaps some comment on a forum or usenet somwhere. Or perhaps on a compuserve group. Or maybe someone else at school.
You are absolutely right. I did not realize that my dataset was missing most of Asia/Africa. Japan ist at ~230%, but interestingly decreasing pretty quickly (decreased their debth from almost 260% GDP in 2020).
I have sadly no idea how much focus this gets in japanese politics, would be very curious if anyone knows.
Government debt gets resolved eventually through inflation. There's never a point where we have to "pay it all back" and get the debt down to zero. We just end up paying of a $1 loan with a dollar that's worth only 50c.
So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us. Inflation is a form of taxation on currency. It's less like credit card debt and more like wage garnishing.
It's also worth pointing out that young people are less affected by inflation than old - retirees and people with savings. Inflation is good for people in debt. So it's not so much your children you have to worry about with today's debt level so much as it is yourself.
> So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us.
This is magical thinking. The bonds are actually held by investors, and when investors see them as a losing bet, they will stop buying them. Unless you think American taxpayers will suddenly be willing to live within our means, it’s a real problem.
The current reserve currency status means that people often use the bonds for reasons other than returns, but we need to not fool ourselves into assuming this paradigm is permanent. Once real inflation gets going, it’s just a coordination problem to change the reserve instrument. After that, the intersection between what the US can feasibly return and what investors require can quickly evaporate.
We are currently on a Japanese trajectory, but that could easily become Argentina.
Again... when the only purchaser becomes the central bank, then you're effectively printing money. Since no one is bearing the cost of actually buying the bonds, and there is no profit motive, then you're ultimately just printing the deficit every year. This is already quite high, and is compounded by the knowledge that outstanding liabilities of the nation basically dwarf the current debt.
If that is the plan, then hyper-inflation is not only on the table, it starts to become probable. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a problem. There isn't a free lunch here. Yes, inflating the debt away is an option... to a point, but there are still hard limits on what the market will bear.
> Since no one is bearing the cost of actually buying the bonds, and there is no profit motive, then you're ultimately just printing the deficit every year.
sure, there are plenty of countries in the world who just print money without all these debt ritual.
> to a point, but there are still hard limits on what the market will bear.
this niche (government prints money to fund its expenses) is not part of any market, but just policy supported by monopoly on violence.
Your point is very superficial. People in power know that majority of citizens don't want to become poorer, so they created sophisticated infrastructure of political parties, financial transactions, methods of policing, which extracts wealth from citizens, but citizens don't know how exactly and what to do about this.
Debt and all fed thing is one of components.
If you’re suggesting that the electorate is not generally in control of fiscal policy then it’s safe to say this conversation is over. We can agree to disagree on the structure of the American government.
The majority of citizens may not be following all this closely, but they're not stupid. They can feel when they're becoming poorer, and they don't like it. They blame the president when it happens, even if they can't explain exactly why.
But what the Republicans might be able to do is spend like drunken sailors, and have the crisis happen when the Democrats are in power after 2028. People blame the current president, whether or not he had much of a chance to do anything about it.
> Government debt gets resolved through inflation.
This is misleading.
US debt as GDP percentage is higher than for any other nation except Italy and Greece, and was much lower historically, too (<50%ish for basically the last century instead of >100% now).
So the status quo is not how government spending gets typically resolved.
Racking up public debt risks runaway inflation, which is unpleasant for everyone.
Comparing a currency issuer like the US to currency users like Italy and Greece is a category error. You can compare Alaska to Greece or California to Italy. But you should compare the US to other currency issuers - like the Eurozone, Japan or the UK.
This sounds like pretty dangerous thinking to me. A government financial crisis is something that happens slowly and then very quickly. The US currently enjoys extremely low borrowing rates and still spends a significant portion of its tax receipts servicing debt. If the country starts to appear much less stable and reliable in the long term those rates can increase sharply, which would put gigantic strain on the country's finances, which would cause rates to jump even more. It's a bad cycle that we very much want to avoid.
Even without any disaster scenarios we spend an immense amount of money every year on debt payments. That money could instead be spent on any number of other use cases that actually produce something useful.
> If the country starts to appear much less stable and reliable in the long term those rates can increase sharply,
but its US who decides which rates it uses to borrow from itself.
I see its just some process to do all this inflation thing in US, while I imagine various other countries just print the money causing inflation and don't go through debt ceiling approval voting.
It’s rather more simple than that. In a floating exchange rate world, which is the one we live in a dollar is just a 0% bearer bond.
So when a government bond matures it is replaced automatically with a simple bank deposit. It’s nothing more than an asset swap.
“People with savings” are precisely why there is a “debt” in the first place. When they spend those savings they pass tax points which then creates the tax that retires the “debt”.
To put it in simple terms the “grandchildren” will “service the debt” using the counterparty “savings assets”inherited from their “grandparents”.
Don’t fall for the standard narrative. It’s not true.
It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
I wonder what the ratio of police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants.
I certainly believe that bursting through someone’s door with guns drawn is a high risk activity. It seems like maybe no one needed to do that in this case, though.
> police deaths during no knock raids vs peacefully served search warrants
Would have to be a randomized trial because right now obviously police only peacefully serve warrants in situations that are already very unlikely to be violent.
I think the traffic stop paranoia stems from a couple high profile incidents like
(1) Brannan in Georgia
(2) Darian Jarrott executed after the feds/HSI setup a drug sting but use NMSP trooper as a sacrificial lamb and then mosie their way on over after for the aftermath.
I've seen police in online forums reference these a lot when any talks come up of toning down their immediate instinct to draw their guns.
Basically in the US the feds will use local/state police as a sacrifice and not tell them that they're part of a sting of armed violent criminals so they're basically getting set up by HSI etc on purpose for surprises.
I’m not sure there’s a general trend of federal officers using state/local officers sacrificially, but no doubt these cases are hammered into officers’ minds over and over.
It's worth pointing out that, while being a cop is a somewhat dangerous profession, it doesn't even crack the top 10. It's much more dangerous to be a tree trimmer, non-airline pilot, logger, roofer, etc. than it is to be a cop.
What's more, a significant portion of that danger comes from the fact that they're driving around a lot and spend a lot of time by the side of the road and that means they end up the victim of crashes while on the job. The biggest risk when conducting a traffic stop isn't the risk that the people you're stopping might decide to kill you, it's that some dumbass thinks his texting is more important than looking at the road, drifts onto the shoulder, and plows into you.
Policing isn't in the top ten most dangerous jobs. It's usually listed around the 15-25th most dangerous job in the US. Many Americans including myself are regularly in more danger.
It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.
It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.
That gives a homicide rate for cops of about 7.5 per 100,000. That's a bit less than twice the US national average, and about on par with the overall murder rate in the Carolinas or Mississippi. Seems pretty good for a profession that would logically bring a substantially increased exposure to murderers.
B isn't necessarily irrational. Many other types of death are at your own actions. Things like drinking alcohol, eating whatever you feel like, not exercising, doing drug, even driving, etc provide some self-identified "benefit" to the individual that they choose to partake. It's rationale that someone is more afraid of dying from an activity they recieve no benefit from than an activity they do.
This is such a common argument that’s basically a fallacy. Many of those dangerous jobs are dangerous because of human error. So it’s funny that you think 60% of deaths being on purpose is normal, what other job in the dangerous top 10 has 60% intentional deaths? Like seriously?
It's a common argument because police and their supporters regularly claim they need to roll up in tactical gear and treat every encounter with civilians like it's a life-and-death struggle because they have one of the most dangerous jobs, yet the truth is they have about an order of magnitude fewer workplace fatalities than roofers and loggers.
This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.
Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.
Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.
> It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.
Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world.
But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
But not all States' gun laws are equally strict? So if the state with the stricted gun laws is acting in a constitutional manner then other states could also implement those laws but choose not to.
So a lot of this stuff is truly self inflicted and the result of poor policy choices -- not because of governments reluctantly but dutifully obeying the 2nd amendment.
> You can hardly make stricter gun laws; we have a right to them in this country. It's hard to limit the guns without infringing on the right of the people.
What an odd take. Gun rights weren't dictated by a burning bush. A group of 39 guys decided for everyone else that that right should exist a quarter of a millenium ago. A completely undemocratic system. Every citizen should have a say and if they will it, anything in the constitution can be amended or struck off.
I agree, but I also doubt you could get anywhere near the population needed to vote for strict gun control to start with. And if it was passed anyways I don't think enough people would accept it and give up their guns even if they had to hide or fight to keep them.
I personally don't trust the US government enough to willingly vote to give them a monopoly on violence even if I otherwise don't shoot guns very often.
This is all such a strange take. What do you think would happen, what's the expectation?
Everybody goes out and starts shooting down their local police force? The military?
I just don't get how people think this would work and if the government would be intimidated by that. I think they'd just shoot first and ask questions later and that's it.
I would say the same thing about the opposite. What do you think people are going to do, take time out of their way to go turn in thousands of dollars worth of guns and ammo for nothing in return? Do you think cops are going to go door-to-door seizing guns and that nobody is going to ever fight back despite being fed the fear of the government barging in and taking citizen's guns by force for their entire life?
I don't believe gun control is effective unless nearly the entire population is accepting it willfully, and if people wanted to do it willfully it would be easy to gain a large majority of votes for that cause. But even the democratic party in some of the densest cities struggle to gain a simple majority from voters on the issue.
I also don't think the government has the power to take peoples guns by force even if they wanted, it would collapse the US if even a tiny portion of people fought back and defeat the entire purpose of trying. Would the US military lose battles against citizens? No, there wouldn't even be very many. But they still wouldn't win the war when some random hillbilly takes a few pot shots at a sub station from 2 miles out and takes down the power for potentially millions of people and all the work and value they produce. Factories don't work without power, essential munitions don't get produced if they can't secure material inputs from across the nation or the world, and if financial institutions takes a dive in response to destruction and chaos there goes US trade power. And you can bet your ass that all the countries the US has been taking a dump on for nearly the last century are going to take advantage of a weakened US.
Unless you change the culture it will be just like the drug war. Firearms familiarity and possession are a cultural rite of passage for ~most males in the USA and there is no way to regulate that in a way that meaningfully stops it short of perhaps large-scale death penalty.
Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.
To get a gun in Norway i need 6 months in a shooting sports club. And then can only take the gun with me for shooting exercise. Strictly prohibited to have a round chambered when not standing on the shooting lane. And then only after an order from the guy running the training.
Again, a bit naive, but that actually sounds okay to me. You'll learn to use the gun responsibly and in a controlled manner. What else would you want to do with it and why?
Most people, including myself, have no interest in jumping through such hoops to exercise a constitutionally protected right. We also value the ability to carry (mostly) anywhere we see fit for the purpose of defending ourselves in a worst case scenario.
Yes, the American cultural preference for guns is well established. The GP's point was that in most of the world guns are more restricted and people are doing just fine.
Sure, but I could print a reliable firearm with ECM'd barrel and make ammunition within a couple weeks if I went to Norway and so could most of your citizens, just following FGC-9 and "but what about ammo" instruction guides. The law says 6 months but in practice that's not the limiting factor. And then with no problem chamber a round and walk around with it in a backpack. The same applies in most of EU; of course in someplace like France or Poland you can straight up buy a black powder revolver over the counter which although heavy works quite well for most self defense cases with a firearm.
The fact is if any particular Norwegian decides today they want a gun, criminal record or not, and they have very modest means by Norwegian standards they will have it within a few weeks, no problem at all. Of course in USA criminal have been found many times with these self-made guns, now quite reliable and accurate, but a great deal of culture here is people will bear arms no matter the prison sentence hanging over their head or what the law says, and that is the cultural issue you will run into trying to curb gun possession in America. The fact Norwegians don't I think has more to do is that they don't view gun's as integrally to their natural rights and cultural imperative as much as Americans do, the physical potentiality is there for them to bear arms roughly widely as Americans do even without a change to law.
What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force.
I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.
That's like observing that we could probably solve the issue of people saying mean things on the internet by requiring ID to access it. You have to consider any expected negative consequences as well as if you'd be violating any rights.
Youre aware that the rest of the planet have stricter gun laws and the American problems are fairly unique?
This is even after controlling for things that exacerbate crime like high economic inequality.
For instance, Brazil [1] (a much poorer and more unequal country than the USA) has lower murder rate than a lot of cities now than the USA. The murder rate of Rio seems to be about on the level of Houston (17/100k), or about a third of Detroit (47).
But Rio clearly has __a lot more crime__ than Houston. It's palpable when you're in either city. Even with the Favelas and heavily armed gangs, the murder rate is comparatively low because *normal people dont have guns at nearly the same rate*.
And it shouldn't take a leap of faith to figure out that higher gun ownership leads to more deaths. Guns are the one tool we have intentionally made to cause death.
1. I'm aware that Brazil has a higher murder rate, but comparing cities is a better pick. The northeast of Brazil is in another league than anywhere in the USA in economic conditions; it's not comparable. The only city I can think of with USA levels of economic development would be Florianopolis (murder rate 7/100k) or maybe Balneario Camboriu, or some parts of Sao Paulo like Vila Olimpia.
Murder is a byproduct of crime. Crime is, largely, downstream of economic conditions with some obvious caveats.
New Hampshire has the 2nd lowest crime rate of the USA states. You could make the same argument for, say, Switzerland (high gun ownership but no crime/murder). But no one would be surprised if you had high gun ownership in Monaco.
Similarly for the ethnic argument you're trying to make: Majority black neighbourhoods in the USA tend to be poor. They also tend to be near more affluent places. Unlike poor white neighbourhoods, which are on average more rural in the USA.
Being poor, and being next to rich people, and being excluded from legal increases of becoming rich, will increase crime.
This should be obvious. Brazil has famously Favelas right next to wealthy areas and has a persistent crime problem for example.
---
In short, it's really incredible how far some Americans will go to deny the obvious truth: *gun prevalence increases deadly crime*.
Sure, some cultural factors will increase crime/violence on the margin. But the reason y'all have a bunch of shootings is that you have a bunch of guns to do shootings with. That simple.
I don't think it's good to hold a misunderstand of the statistics against someone when (as in this case) they're so easy to read in a certain way.
> the reason y'all have a bunch of shootings is that you have a bunch of guns to do shootings with
Yet by your own admission poverty and inequality appear to account for the bulk of the effect.
Actually I think you'll find that plenty of Americans will acknowledge the link you point out. Just not in a politically charged exchange where the other party appears to have an ideological axe to grind. Where they'll likely disagree is the extent or significance of it. In many cases they will object that rights should never be curtailed for the purpose of lowering petty crime (I tend to agree).
I think it's also worth mentioning the statistic that legal gun owners (which is a wildly low bar in the US) have a lower rate of violent offense than the police.
Sure poverty explains crime, and murder is the ultimate crime.
That said, my point was that a place like Rio, where you feel alertness at a physiological level by the constant lack of security, still has a murder rate around Houston, a vastly richer and safer city.
And Brazil really is a good comparison in my opinion: the economic inequality is actually worse than in the USA, and they both have the slave holding history leading to concentrated poverty areas with high ethnic segregation
I don't personally think that the upsides of the US gun laws are worth anything near the downsides being paid.
Regarding the police, American police is notoriously prone to violence compared to other developed countries.
Ah it seems you finally understand the point. Blaming the skin pigment is as silly as blaming the gun.
Murder rates in US have very little to do with gun law, and they have very little to do with skin color, even though they're heavily correlated to the latter and weakly correlated to the former.
Of course within the USA the state levels laws will do little. There's free movement between states!
Compare the USA to Canada, where you can't bring a gun easily. You'll see Canadian murder rates being very low. Even controlling for similar factors at the city or neighborhood level.
Of course I'm blaming the gun: it's pretty hard to kill someone with other weapons. Stabbings are often survived, even.
If you just want to pick an American neighbor and make a crude comparison based on that, I could just as easily point out Mexico, which has stricter gun laws than the USA and Canada and fewer guns per capita than both USA and Canada. And yet a higher murder rate than both. And I cannot 'easily' (disputable, but lets accept on face these semantics for the purpose of controlled national border) take a gun to or from Mexico.
I assert again it is not the gun laws even if you want to do a national level view. Even a national analysis of gun laws in the three major countries of North America do not yield the conclusion you assert.
You are cherry picking to try and find causality while damning a comment where I merely pointed out a correlation between black people and murder rates. This is hypocrisy.
When you started to look at underlying causes at crime, you were so very close to getting there, but for some reason disengaged from that and went back to our flawed basis that would suggest it's the black pigment or it's the guns causing it.
Which shows how ridiculous it is to assign that as the cause, doesn't it? It's almost as if pointing to a lot of guns or black people in one spot doesn't show that's why murders are happening, only allows you to tie statistical correlation.
We've also seen it go wrong plenty of times. They can do them and we can do us I figure; I'm quite happy with my gun rights thanks.
There are highly developed countries that tightly regulate speech and network access relative to most of the west. Does that mean adopting an ID requirement to post on Twitter coupled with anti hate speech laws would be an obviously good thing?
It was an arbitrary example. Try to see past the politically charged topic to the actual analogy that I'm attempting to make.
The point of my original reply wasn't about the position being expressed but rather the stated reasoning. If your logic amounts to "Y could solve X therefore we should be doing Y" notice that when applied to other things that line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up very well.
If you want to have a discussion about child mortality versus tail risks such as elections being suspended or the government murdering protesters a la Iran that's fine but please realize that wasn't the point of my earlier reply.
Most importantly, Australia removed "self-defence" as a reason to own firearms. You have to be a farmer, hunter, or belong to a shooting club.
While the number of guns increased, the number of gun owners dropped. And the new regulations enacted this year drop the number of guns one can own even more.
There was a near-total ban on "military style" guns. See how the terrorists at the massacre last year were limited by the type of guns they had access to, only managing to kill 15 despite having all the time in the world. An Ar-15 or similar weapon could have been used to slaughter that 15 in under 15 seconds.
In the sense that there are more private registered guns than ever before in Australia, sure.
> Most importantly, Australia removed "self-defence" as a reason to own firearms.
More importantly, it unified gun laws - before the Port Arthur shooting, Queensland, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, probably the Australian Capital Territory were all unregulated.
Unregulated states with no border control effectively made the entire Federation of States unregulated.
Regulated states, at least the ones that I lived in prior to Port Arthur, didn't have "self defence" as a reason for owning gun - it was always about hunting, feral control, specific security (regularly carrying money) etc.
The last I checked, the emphasis was more on where you intended to use / carry a gun; shooting club (common), carry for security in street (rare), rural (property owner or have letter of authority to shoot from a property owner).
> There was a near-total ban on "military style" guns.
Sure .. they serve no real purpose, the only activity that requires high fire rates and larger magazines is pig shooting, maybe camel control, and rat shooting.
Rats can be shot with professional BB guns .. a better choice when shooting in sheds, silos, etc - no spark or risk of punching holes in tin walls.
If you're pig shooting in bulk, that's a contract shooting licence.
> they serve no real purpose, the only activity that requires high fire rates and larger magazines ...
Did the Australian ban of "military style" rifles include a blanket clause that covers all semi-automatic fire? Or is it an almost entirely aesthetic category as it tends to be whenever such measures are proposed in the US?
When it comes to automatic fire there's a rather famous US case where someone was ultimately convicted for possessing a shoelace (IIRC) attached to some fastening hardware. As to larger magazines, those probably don't even meet the bar for an introductory level highschool shop project.
From what I understand most semi-auto guns are banned in Australia, but of course they never had a ton of those to start with. But there are still plenty of pump action, lever action, bolt action, etc guns which aren't meaningfully less capable. Shooting twice as fast doesn't mean you can kill twice as fast because you can't aim twice as fast. Like the majority of guns Afgan insurgents had were 60 year old bolt-actions which were quite obviously still capable enough to be deadly even to the top military in the world.
> We’ve seen other highly developed countries operate just fine without arming their citizenry to the teeth.
Good for them. As an American, I'm quite happy with our Second Amendment rights, I'm not looking to roll that back in the slightest. And if anything, with the recent rise of the fascist authoritarian regime that we've seen, I'd think that maybe a whole lot of "anti gun" people here would be well on their way to becoming "formerly anti gun" people.
All my life I've heard that an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government. Now that we have creeping authoritarians running the country, where are all of those "second amendment solution" people? What trigger are they waiting for, exactly?
Recall that this authoritarian won the popular vote ~18 months ago.
The protection is against a minority authoritarian government. If half the populace supports the guy in charge then taking up arms is effectively a declaration of civil war. That's a case of the cure being worse than the affliction.
Fast forward a year or so, suppose popularity has hit single or low double digits, imagine a blatant attempt at subverting the election process, that's where an armed populace comes in.
Look, I could pick up a rifle tomorrow, and march on DC by myself with the intention of toppling the fascist regime. And what would result? I'd be quickly arrested or killed and nothing would change. So what's the point?
But if I was part of a group of 1,000,000 like-minded people, then I might still be arrested or killed, but at least there's a much higher likelihood that some actual change would take place.
Now, as a lifelong believer in the "an armed populace is to protect us from authoritarian government" mindset myself, I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in a lot of people right now. People that I grew up with, that I've always trusted, respected, and maybe even admired. Because while fascism metastasizes and spreads through our country nearly completely unchecked, they all seem unwilling to even speak up against what's going on. And I can't defend their choices, but I can say that I still believe that there is a tipping point, some event, or sequence of events, that would kick things into into gear if needed[1].
[1]: I say "if needed" because it's not 100% clear to me that the only possible way out of this mess is an armed uprising. We might still be able to "vote our way out of this" and the optimistic take is that many Americans are sitting on their hands as long as they hold a shred of hope that that is still possible.
The more pessimistic take is that a majority of the "second amendment to protect us from authoritarianism" crowd are hypocritical ass-clowns, who are actually OK with authoritarianism as long as "their guy" is the one in power. :-(
But you won't get that critical mass without a spark.
People need to see action and see it work without repercussions to the actor.
People will take notice when someone like Thiel, Bannon, or Miller are taken down with a drone and the drone operator escapes arrest.
They'll think to themselves "Wait a minute, if someone can take out a billionaire I can take out that cop who raped my cousin and got a paid vacation as punishment for it."
What comes after that is anybody's guess but I predict an impending moment where individual citizens realize that they're not as helpless as they have been lead to believe and that technology can help them eliminate long-standing criminals operating in positions of power with immunity in theiry local communities.
As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime. What scenarios relating to authoritarian regimes (be specific) do you find having a gun at home would help with?
> As an individual person, having right to bear guns doesn't seem to have any impact or saving powers against the authoritarian regime.
See my reply above. But loosely speaking, you are correct when looking at things from a purely individual point of view. No one of us is going to topple an authoritarian regime by ourselves. But I don't think that was ever the point. It's an assemblage of large numbers of like-minded armed individuals who can effect change.
And just to be clear... I'm a peaceful person at heart (but not a pacifist). I don't want blood-shed, and I don't want to see an armed uprising or a civil war on many levels. But I'd at least like to see many of my fellow #2A advocates being more vocal and visible about stating our displeasure with the current environment, and our willingness in principle to take action if/when it becomes clear that it is necessary. That, ideally, in and of itself reduces the need for actual violence, by acting as a strong deterrent.
Aside from the obvious (being ready and able to form an armed resistance) there's the deterrent. When you know that your populace has certain options available to them that will inform your actions.
You are naive for assuming that the government aren't the bad guys with guns. Just ask the 30,000 Iranian protesters that were slaughtered if you don't believe me.
That’s total officers shot, not specifically for raids.
A NYT investigation indicated there were “at least 13” officer deaths tied to forced entry raids from 2010-2016, so around 2/year. It’s unclear how many other fatalities happen in no knock raids. Given that there are only 50-60 total fatalities/year it’s surprising there isn’t comprehensive data for this.
Another part of this - higher interest rates really put the brakes on home values. We own a rental property and the home value has more or less been locked in since 2022. In our otherwise hot metro area, nobody has raised their rental rates on similar properties in 4 years.
It's a win-win for our tenants. Prices seem to be stable and there's no rush for them to lock down a house RIGHT NOW.
It's sure not good for my bottom line as a landlord for them to keep adding homes and keeping rates up. But it sure seems like a no brainer for society at large.
Any reasonable landlord/real estate investor will have planned for various results - if your rental empire depends on "rents go up" and can't handle a flat market, let alone a downturn, you're going to be in for a bad time.
A stable market is great; as you can find good deals with some sort of certainty, and focus on where you can actually build value (rehab, etc).
If you are smart, you throttle up investments just before a boom starts and throttle them back just before a boom ends. At least you try to up your margins during good times so you can survive bad times. The trick is keeping your talent employed during the bad times so they are trained up and still in the industry for good times. Stability is obviously preferable.
I find this hard to believe because there is a massive difference in tastes just between two dairies. You can also get low-pasteurization milk from the same dairy and the taste difference is also remarkable.
Yes, different feed, cow breeds, etc are all going to influence taste. You also need to identify the path that the low-pasteurization milk goes through to see if it has anything that will adjust the taste. My father's professor was able to control the variables such that it was the same milk, no contaminates, etc.
If neither sample is your usual brand you can get two different flavors, but still not be able to tell which was pasteurized. You could try to guess that the one you liked best was raw and be wrong.
It's a great story for informing any suckers out there who bought this cheese that they should probably throw it out and avoid buying from the company in the future since they've got a long history of poisoning people and clearly don't care much about the safety of their customers.
> Pasteurization is a simple process of briefly heating milk and other products to a temperature that can kill disease-causing germs. The FDA has highlighted studies finding that pasteurization does not negatively affect the nutritional value of milk. Still, advocates of raw milk continue to claim, without evidence, that raw dairy has benefits.
This is a bit disingenuous of the reporter to include this. The appeal of raw milk is that it tastes better. Whether or not it's 'healthier' is kind of ephemeral and not really for the FDA to decide.
Personally, I'll stick with pasteurized milk. But if people knowingly want to take risks I don't see why we can't just slap a warning label on these products.
> Whether or not it's 'healthier' is kind of ephemeral and not really for the FDA to decide.
Some raw milk producers and nut jobs claim that raw milk will cure or treat things like allergies, asthma, psoriasis, diabetes, high blood pressure, lactose intolerance, and arthritis. Those kinds of false claims along with their unproven claims on the nutritional difference are exactly what the FDA is supposed to address.
Flavor is ephemeral. Whether or not something contains a vitamin or cures asthma is not.
The Walmart greeter also isn't paying for the bulk of their healthcare expenses because Walmart provides subsidized health insurance to all employees who work at least 30 hours per week. All US employers with at least 50 employees are required to do so under the ACA. If the greeter worked fewer than 30 hr/wk, they wouldn't get insurance through Walmart, but they would likely qualify for an ACA subsidy that covered close to the entire cost of a health insurance plan on the marketplace.
The statement, "The US spends ~$14,570 per person on healthcare. Japan spends ~$5,790" is about the average amount that the country as a whole is spending per person on healthcare, not what any given individual is paying. Per-capita GDP (i.e. the average economic output per person) is the most relevant comparison.
Whats your point, US healthcare is ridiculously expensive to detriment of all US citizens sans those working for health insurance conglomerates. Any objective data you pick will show this, no need for strawmen.
They make more than they would in Japan. But people can make $0 in any country. Regardless, part-time Walmart greeters are fortunately not paying full price for health insurance in the US.
I'm curious what you're implying. Is there a country where the poorest person is so rich they can get all the insurance and care they require without government subsidy?
This is called "purchasing power parity". There's an official index for it, as well as ad hoc measures like the Economist Big Mac Index.
To some extent it's circular: the US has a higher number of GDP because it spends more on healthcare. The broken leg version of the broken window fallacy.
This is an excellent point. Another comment pointed out that the gap in median salary is not as great as the gap in per capita GDP. Depending on the causes this and lower prices may mean Japanese are better off then Americans - e.g. if there is greater self-supply within households that would not be captured by GDP.
This feels like a misleading ratio, it's just saying the cost is the same in per capita terms but says nothing about the absolute cost or more importantly cost as a percentage of income, which matters for the majority of people in the denominator of the GDP per capita calculation.
I get that it's not the same Atari as it was 30 years ago. But I liken it to you being a Beatles cover band and the estate of John Lennon reaches out to you, you're going to treat them with some sort of respect.
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