The solution is obviously not exclusively from pricing models, we need other energy sources than renewables for the time being, that doesn't mean we need to have market-based electricity pricing.
Imagine the state installing as many solar panels as society, guided by experts, democratically decides it wants, basically deciding as a society the energy mix instead of hoping that companies will install enough if we bribe them enough with taxes to do so, and if it's profitable. Then, it decides a pricing model based on a mixture of subsidy and incentivising consumption during production hours.
Problem solved, innit?
Do I really need to explain the concepts of taxes, subsidies, or fixed prices regardless of demand, to an adult?
Cheap electricity is great for consumers, but not necessarily for producers. Some people might say, "well, screw producers," but even if you take profit out of the equation, electric utilities need to be able to at least cover their expenses, and you can't do that if the amount of electricity you're generating relative to the demand is so high the price actually goes negative (meaning the utility is actually paying the consumer). Again, that's good for consumers, but I'm sure you can see how that's not a sustainable business model.
Fully agreed: let's eliminate business from the issue, and create national, for-service electric grids, that produce the cheapest renewables at all possible times in the most efficient way possible, disregarding hourly profit and taking into account exclusively the cost in €/kWh produced over the lifetime of each energy source.
Suddenly it's obvious that the problem isn't with renewables, but with organising the electric grid as a market
abundance of electricity when people need it the least
Isn't peak consumption around middle of the day for most countries?
it's not economical
Mfw electricity being cheap to generate is not economical
I'm not advocating for pushing it over the brink (Trump), I'm advocating for conditioning the vote to an end to genocide (seems reasonable to me). If you think that doesn't work, the logical desired consequence for me is the destruction of the state upholding genocide.
"America, despite being on the brink of fascism and its political alternative still being genocidal, is the bulwark of freedom and equality. Never mind the history of subversion, coups, and literal war against democratically elected governments all over the world, and our support of monarchic, fascist, and literally genocidal regimes. Anyone who wants the US to stop doing these things is part of a counter-intelligence program"
American exceptionalism is one HELL of a drug
Ok, that's really good insight, so it boils down to France not respecting the 1935 treaty by refusing to declare Czechoslovakia as a victim of aggression?
As a Spanish, I can relate too well (sadly) to the part where the president of Czechoslovakia says "I did not dare to fight with Russian aid alone, because I knew that the British and French Governments would make out of my country another Spain", I assume they're talking of how the Soviet Union was the only country to sell weapons to Republican Spain in their fight against fascism, even as the Nazis and Italian Fascists were militarily and economically helping the reactionaries in Spain, and how France and England didn't do anything under the guise of "non-interventionism".
We can't possibly stop the Democratic candidate for president from supporting genocide
I believe America is the greatest force for freedom and equality in the world
Ok, I'm sorry, I can't even keep a straight face at that. I hope you'll reflect a bit. Have a good day, rofl
"a month before the election"
The escalation in Gaza by Israel is one year ago, we've been saying this for a year...
So basically your whole argument is "we can't possibly stop the democrats from supporting a genocide, it's as physically impossible as making a home run with a pool noodle". If the American system is truly so fucked up, then you must agree with the following: Death to America as a country.
Do you agree?
"everyone who doesn't vote for Harris during an ongoing genocide under her administration as vice-president is either a trump supporter or a Russian bot"
God, you guys are pathetic. You asked for a solution, I gave you one, you just don't wanna listen, you're truly Blue MAGA
Because I know that won't work
You don't see the irony of replying that after basically saying "the only thing stopping your vote from mattering is not believing in it"?
acting like a petulant, naive child
Sorry that you're discomforted by my protest against genocide
who would you rather protest under
You're literally under democrat government, so I hope that you're saying this while organising and attending protest. How about, hear me out, protesting with your vote as I explained
If every vote counts, then withhold your Kamala vote on the condition that they will stop a genocide. Parties pay attention to vote totals and where they're winning and losing and what issues are connecting to voters. It's only true that you can't change the genocidal nature of Democrat's if you believe it.
Even if you don't think you're going to stop them from committing genocide, you should still uphold that moral point and condition your vote on it
You should be conditioning your vote to Harris to the Dems stopping the genocide. If you think the USA is a democratic country, then a critical mass of anti-genocide voters should be enough to sway Kamala out of supporting genocide. If you don't believe so, then you're essentially saying that the two-party system is completely undemocratic, and you should start organising against it immediately.
Sorry, I was going with Wikipedia there, care to elaborate more on what happened then?
invading poland side by side with the nazis
Again, literal Nazi revisionism. The invasion of Poland was mostly a peaceful process, and the only aim was to establish pro-communist forces in the area that would ensure Poland would join the USSR against the Nazis when the Nazis attacked. The same was attempted in Finland, and what do you know, Finland actually did join the Nazis during the Continuation War. And what do you know, the USSR retreated its troops from Poland after WW2.
Poland could have entered a military alliance with the USSR for the former 10 years, Stalin went as far as offering to send ONE MILLION soldiers, together with aviation and artillery, to military allies if France, England and Poland joined in a military alliance against the Nazis. But I guess they would rather see the Nazis massacre the communists first. That strategy didn't work out as planned now, did it?
They didn't want to get rid of the Nazis
This is incredibly ahistorical revisionism. The USSR prepared for the war against Nazi Germany for many years before it started. In the second half of the 1930s, seeing the Nazi rising to power (Nazis being overt enemies of Communism, as proven by what they did to Communists and to Unions in their controlled territories), they ramped up the weapon production and their military industry, and I'll say it again in case it didn't register: they spent the entire 30s seeking out military alliances with France, England and Poland against the Nazis. They offered military help to Czechoslovakia in 1938 during the Munich agreements in which Sudetenland was given to the Nazis.
Why do you think they had a NAP?
They had a non-aggression pact because Germany was an established industrial power for 100+ years at that point, while the USSR had had 19 years from 1921 after the Russian Civil War and WW1 to rebuild the country and to industrialise. They desperately needed every year they could get to reduce the industrial gap between them and the Nazis, as proven by the immense human cost to the USSR in the war against Nazis.
The Soviets literally saved Eastern Europe from an even worse fate, at immense cost of human lives (25+ million human lives lost in the USSR to Nazism), god knows how many millions more of Slavs (and other groups like Jews and Roma) the Nazis would have genocided if it hadn't been for the Soviets. Have some respect before spewing anti-communist, nazi propaganda here, please.
because they wanted to do imperialism
You're just showing you don't know what "imperialism" is. The USSR never engaged in resource exploitation or unequal exchange with other countries, its terms of trade were always comparatively fair, especially if you compare those to the terms of trade of the western world.
The USSR didn't have any imperialist ambitions. For fucks sake, the literal first thing the Bolsheviks did in 1917 after the October Revolution, was to implement a constitution which gave the full right of self-determination and unilateral secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire, it's literally how Poland gained independence, as well as many other countries like Finland or Ukraine. What did Poland immediately do: invading Ukraine and modern Belarus and attacking the RSFSR during the Russian Civil War because of its expansionist nationalist desires of going back to Polish-Lithuanian borders. Maybe that helps explain why the USSR didn't trust Poland not to join the Nazis, especially after 10 years of Poland, France and England rejecting to form military alliances with the USSR against Nazis? Finns, after the winter war, quite literally joined the Nazis in the continuation war, going all the way to participating in the siege of Leningrad.
After the war, most of these countries that the USSR invaded went back to being their own countries as the USSS retreated all its troops. Such imperialism, amirite? The influence of the USSR in the politics of Eastern European countries after WW2, isn't any greater than the influence of the US in western Europe, so unless you're claiming that the US was carrying out imperialism in western Europe (and would have carried it in Eastern Europe too if it weren't for the USSR), then no, the USSR didn't carry out any imperialism.
immediately started spewing whataboutism
You literally have no idea what "whataboutism means, I gave a detailed explanation on why calling the Molotov-Ribbentrop a "deal with the Nazis", and stopping there without further context, is revisionist and honestly very close to Nazi propaganda. You're just saying "whataboutism whataboutism" because you're actually incapable of refuting anything I've said.
You're still not answering my claim about historical revolutions. Care to address that part?
Source: euvsdisinfo
We are the East Stratcom Task Force, a team of experts with a background mainly in communications, journalism, social sciences and Russian studies.
We are part of the EU’s diplomatic service which is led by the EU’s High Representative
"Your comment is state propaganda! Here's some state propaganda from my side to discredit it!!" Oh I wonder, why would a European state agency directed by Josep Borrell (Social Democrat party of Spain, the PSOE), well-known NATO cocksucker (he was in the government when the Spanish government pushed the referendum to join NATO after 4 years of pro-NATO propaganda), want to create anti-communist and Russophobic propaganda?
If you read my comment, I'm not denying the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, I'm framing it in context. All that the article you sent says, is "Russian nationalists sometimes also put context to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, so everyone who puts context to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is reproducing what Russian nationalists say!!"
The article vaguely points to a few dubious claims* of "USSR sending Jews to Germany" (USSR being the most progressive country against antisemitism back in its time, eliminating former pogroms in the former Russian Empire, and with overrepresentation of Jewish people in government and science, and even going as far as creating a Jewish Autonomous Oblast for Jewish people who might have felt like moving to a region with higher Jewish representation). It also makes a few claims of "tech transfer" between Nazi Germany and the USSR (ignoring why the USSR would want technology to defend itself from Germany and ignoring that the US had plenty of factories in Nazi Germany for example). And it completely ignores the existence of the Collective Security attempted for the 10 prior years by the USSR.
You're just choosing to ignore everything I said in my comment because "Russian nationalists sometimes try to put context to Molotov-Ribbentrop". I'm literally a communist, I'm the first and foremost hater of fascist Putin. The fact that Russian nationalists stoke the USSR occasionally for nationalist purposes (while removing any socialist ideology from their claims to keep it nice and capitalist), doesn't mean they can't sometimes make a better historical claim to some events by pure chance.
*Edit: the "USSR SENT JEWS TO NAZI GERMANY" claim apparently refers to a "few hundred" people, including Jews, that requested asylum in the USSR from Nazi Germany and were denied asylum and returned to Nazi Germany. I don't think EU countries, who are now rejecting Russian refugees (let alone from northern Africa or middle east) by the thousands, have the high moral ground to complain about this
Poland has made some of my favourite music of all time
As the title says, Poland has birthed some of my favourite songs (as a Spaniard). The band Riverside is just incredible, and in particular the song "Deprived (irretrievably lost imagination)" has to be the most fucking beautiful song ever written. Additionally, Coma's "zaprzepaszczone siły wielkiej armii świętych znaków" haunts my everyday too, so immensely good.
Can you guys recommend any similar polish music to this? Because this is EXACTLY my jam. If not, anyway, thanks to your country for birthing these absolutely immaculate masterpieces.
MLK and his vision on moderates in politics
Martin Luther King was a well-known activist for Black peoples' and worker's rights. After many years of fighting racism and oppression from the establishment, he shared insights on some of his findings of the unjust opposition to rightful change, which may surprise a few of us who are still learning about his figure:
"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
We've recently seen widespread liberal rejection of grassroots progressive movements such as Black Lives Matter, the protests against western collaborationism in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and many so-called "progressives" dedicating more time to finding the mistakes committed by non-western regimes than those of their own nations, and calling "Tankies" to those who are a bit further to the left than us. Let us consider if we ourselves are the moderates that Dr. Luther King was talking about, and let's push for the change we actually want rather than bickering about who's "too far to the left"