Nothing quite like crash landing a squad into the jungle under fire from Vietcong. Or the reverse, swooping in to grab the last three guys still alive surrounded and under heavy mortar fire

Yep

China is preparing for real war against Taiwan, hoping that restricting these minerals will prevent Taiwan backers from replenishing their militaries in a war of attrition within a meaningful timeftame after invasion.

Boycott America? Sure. Buy British? Nice sounding sentiment, but don’t fall for the trap. There are some resources we’ve got. Some we don’t. Maximize our strengths, work with our friends.

Don’t assume your tax dollars are put to good use. If your neighbors are gullible enough, your money will literally be siphoned towards repressing you.

Invest globally.

Frankly, she’s right. What you see countries like Canada doing is just as nationalist as what the US is doing, and the UK would be wise to stay out of it.

We need to stop this cascade of nationalism. Nationalism only leads to war. When countries are interdependent, they lose more than they gain through bloodshed. This is the only reason the past eighty years have been relatively calm, with wars only concentrated in places with little economic interdependence between aggressors.

Globalism, despite its faults, is the only true force for peace.

It’s perfectly possible to do in the US, just costs a bit more. So, capitalism being what it is, that work got outsourced so the vultures could see higher numbers.

They’re called “rare earth elements”, but they’re extremely common. They’re just in trace amounts…everywhere in the Earth’s crust. China stopping exports just means everyone else will have a reason to extract them, when before China was just a path of least resistance. Will take a bit of time to re-establish industry though.

Lottery system. No more elected positions, just random appointment based on lottery from pools of qualified volunteers that throw their hat in. Similarly for top appointment positions. Some lottery pools have requirements, like to be a supreme court justice, you have to have practiced law for X years. Top generals, you have to have served at or above a certain rank for X years and still be active duty. And so on.

No more campaigning, no more political parties, no more consolidation of power. You essentially just end up with a random assortment of minimally qualified citizen peers every term rotation. They generally don’t know each other, and so aren’t incentivized to cover up institutional corruption.

You could argue that random (but technically qualified) people could be crazy, or have wild values different from their peers. You could also argue they might not be the best choice for the job vs. peers. But look at your elected officials today. Are they anything like your peers? Are they truly the best, brightest picks? Do their values really represent common citizens?

Mayne pedantic, but:

Everyone seems to think CEOs are the problem. They are not. They report to and get broad instruction from the board. The board can fire the CEO. If you got rid of a CEO, the board will just hire a replacement.

Ayn Rand collected social security checks after retirement until her death.

That should tell you all you need to know about Ayn Rand.