Absolutely. But you can combine motivation and discipline. Over time I've made my morning exercise into "just what I do" in the morning by having discipline as best as I can. But it sure does help to have a good show or the next part of a movie to look forward to while I do it.
Does liberal mean something different where you live? Where I live, the right-wing republicans are the ones who are prone to letting corporations do whatever they want without regard to the people/environment getting hurt.
In most of the world, "liberal" doesn't mean the left half of the political spectrum. In many places it's the centerish part and in a few places it's the rightish part. In the US, until recently, almost all mainstream politicians were liberal in this sense (even while many of the Republican liberals used "liberal" as an epithet in campaign ads).
From wikipedia:
> Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law.[1][2] Liberals espouse various and sometimes conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.[3] Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history
In this case I was referring to economic liberalism, the believe in private property, free markets, etc., not what Americans believe it means. This includes democrats and republicans [1], they are both economically liberal. I forgot Americans are under the impression that liberal means left-wing / democrat or something. The differences you point out are within this ideology, so like which industry do and don't we subsidize and regulate, etc. it has less meaning for people who aren't liberals.
[1] see the overlap between the economic policies of Reagan and Bill Clinton
"confused" is a pretty generous reading of the situation. They just don't want anyone here from outside the US. Or anyone who isn't white, really. If they don't have a justification for kicking someone out they'll make one up or just use it as a way of scaring other people. Too many hispanic people are being picked up outside their immigration court hearings or lawyer's offices while trying to immigrate "the right way" for it to be confusion or coincidence.
The way I've been thinking about this is that there is The Tech and The Business. The Tech is amazing and improving all the time at the core, then there are the apps being built to take advantage of the Tech, a lot of which are also amazing.
But The Business is the bubble part. Like all the companies during the first internet boom/bubble who did stuff like lay tons of fiber and raise tons of money for rickety business plans. Those companies went out of business but the fiber was still there and still useful. So I think you're right in that the Tech part is being shafted a little in the conversation because the Business part is so bubbly.
A little malicious compliance is probably in order if I was the cops.
Congratulations: the port is now a crime scene, its gonna take hours or days to process this. I'm going to need you to remove all containers from this shipper from the stacks for further inspection. Please stop all movement of containers. I'll need to interview all longshoremen who came in contact with this container. Please begin filling out these 17 forms to recover your inspection fee.
You need to think of the containers that are stopped, inspected, and found to have nothing illegal. £200 would seem much less than the costs the police are causing by holding a container [0]. You're actually arguing for the government to cause even more damage, in retaliation for one small instance of the government having to partially compensate the victims of its actions. Frankly we should be moving in the exact opposite direction where the government correctly accounts for the harms it causes, instead of externalizing them in a reverse lottery.
[0] I welcome corrections on this, but I would think the commercial per-day storage fee is higher than £200
They are far less interested in stopping crime than they are in ensuring the wheels of the capitalist world-eating machine remain sufficiently greased.
The primary role of the police after all is to protect capital, not people.
Shutting down a port would cost the billionaires (who donate to the politicians who are in charge of the police) money, so its much preferable to the police and those in positions of power over them to let the crime run rampant so long as the ports keep operating so that the billionaires profits can flow unimpeded.
I assure you that the people having their supercars, million dollar farm equipment, and other goods stolen and shipped overseas are also capitalists, and consider their stolen assets to be capital as well.
> A little malicious compliance is probably in order if I was the cops.
Tell me you're American without telling me you're American.
Here, we prefer our police to be beholden to the public and obey the law; the spirit as well as the letter. It creates a trust that is clearly lacking with the (frankly thuggish) American police. To their clear detriment.
The image seems to show him cutting the container open with an angle grinder. Do you want the police to be able to destructively enter any property without making the owner whole?
Yeah, in this case there was a stolen Porsche in it, but most of the time it's likely to be an innocent shipment.
They were cutting the tamper seal off. That is a disposable metal part that sells for a few cents. It is supposed to be removed destructively, and authorities do it all the time for inspection purposes, document the serial number of seal they removed, and tell the shipper what the new seal is. Sometimes its a lock, but most shippers don't do that since it is a hassle to get the keys to the receiver, and customs will cut your lock off. The act of sealing the container after inspection makes the owner whole.
While it is "destructive" in a very strict sense, it damages no property in any relevant way.
Any shipper anywhere on earth is well aware that their container can be opened by the authorities at any time.
That's a thing in the USA. The police bulldozed someone's house and didn't pay a dime. The family sued the police and lost, because the law says the police can just do that - bulldoze your home "to catch a criminal" - and they don't have to compensate you.
You don't want this. As long as the police are actually catching criminals, the fee shouldn't bother them. It's probably not that much compared to the rest of the cost of the operation.
Sibling comment says the seal is worth a few cents, but ignores the inconvenience of someone having to go to the port and replace the seal, plus the possible delay in getting it loaded. These containers and their contents are worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars each. A $200 fee to be able to mess with one is not unreasonable.
It's easy to over index on data when it's the bubble you're in. I know it happens to me on Reddit. Since I see so many different subs it makes it seem like you're getting a well-rounded view of things but that can be an illusion.
This is the same argument people made for DOGE. "Don't we want the government to be more efficient?" Yes, nobody is going to argue the opposite. But there are ways of doing this that are rational, then there is the way this is happening. Using a chainsaw for fine cutting only works when you are an expert at chainsaws. Otherwise you're just chopping chunks off something with a dangerous tool.
Of course this is assuming they actually want these agencies to be more efficient and not just die, which is a big assumption.
Pretty sure DOGE was always an excuse to point fingers (and make cuts) at any program the administration didn't like.
I mean if you were tasked with "government efficiency" don't you think the lowest hanging fruit would be the Pentagon budget? But, sure, go after air traffic control instead.
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