The vast majority of sales on any product is supplying industry for other projects. The 10-25% increase in a component's price just becomes a small percentage of the final product price. All together, the final assembled product is more expensive to produce, but for no directly-attributable reason. It's not "the tariff on the case". It's "parts just cost more for this batch".
Now, that takes place over a span of years, as parts work their way through supply-chain warehouses. Computers are some of the fastest-moving products, but they can still take a couple of years to move inventory from manufacturer to consumer. It's a few months at the importer, a few months at the retailer, and a few months at the assembler, but it adds up. That delay further reduces the visibility of the tariff's impact. Parts just seem to have generally-higher prices, even if they appear to come from American sources.
By the time the product gets to the consumer market, it's still listed with the usual markup, and sells at a slightly-reduced rate, but since the tariffs affect all manufacturers with American supply chains, consumers can't get a better deal by going elsewhere. Even if another manufacturer were able to sell at lower prices, they now have an option to raise their prices to keep the market status quo (which is likely right what they're tooled for and ready to produce). In short, the US manufacturers' profits are cut, and foreign manufacturers' profits grow.
Everyone's always willing to complain, but yet they continually want cheaper and cheaper flights, while the actual costs of operating an airline just keep rising. Customers want more destinations and more airport services. Somebody's going to be paying for that, so it comes at the cost of legroom.
As I understand, Dr. Grumpy does use the medical version.
Really, I suspect the problem is statistical. It's 99.9% accurate, but if it's transcribing 1,000 words a day, that means it still screws one up. Some days, it's funny when that happens.
That's okay! It's only 1 or 2 megawatts continuously for those 10 years!
That's only $21 million in electricity costs alone, and 100,000 metric tons of CO2 added to the atmosphere. Surely, that's a small price to pay to be good celestial neighbors...
Consider the alternative. The guy who's responsible for recording exactly what my condition is, and what my treatment plans are... does not actually have medical training?
We have that already. It's Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and an endless source of amusement is seeing how badly it misunderstands what the doctor says, because it doesn't understand the context.
There are of course six (3!) permutations: (1,2,3), (1,3,2), (2,1,3), (2,3,1), (3,1,2), (3,2,1)
However, those are all contained in the sequence (1,2,3,1,2,1,3,2,1), which is 9 elements long. The question is whether 9 is actually the shortest sequence, and how that extends to sets beyond three elements.
True, but it's also not formalized or rigorously defined to the degree necessary as a foundation for software development. Instead of measuring and defining risk factors and consumption rates, it's looking at a field and saying "that should be enough".
It's also worth noting that the culture is, in some ways, a lot more forgiving than Western standards. In the West, if you screw up your financial estimates, you fail, go bankrupt, sell the farm, and try to find a different job. In rural Africa, if you don't harvest enough, you beg from neighbors (or the village chief) until the next season.
It's a culture that works like insurance... unless you habitually fail so nobody will support you, and you starve. Maybe not so forgiving.
For comparison, where I was, an average monthly wage was (at the time, in a rural area) 40 USD*. For a single company to pay an American-standard wage there would be like a company opening an American office paying an average of $7.5 million annual salary today. It sounds great, but knowing that a major employer in an area pays such high rates opens the door for local hyperinflation, because everyone who doesn't work for that company knows that the folks who do will be able to pay higher prices. Along with that inflation comes an influx of scams and crime, because the reward is worth far more than the expense of running their scam.
The most I've seen in person was a mining company that paid around $150/month on the same rural region. That's about equivalent to a $300,000 salary in America today. The results were about what's seen in San Francisco... Spiking real estate prices, heavy commuter traffic, and intense pressure to sell property and move out of the local area to cash in on the bubble.
From what I found with a quick search, the average monthly salary in Kenya is $76, which works out to about $3.50 per day. Paying $5 per day (roughly $105/month) doesn't seem that bad, superficially or not.
* All monetary amounts mentioned are US equivalent, regardless of local currency, and not adjusted for inflation, locale, industry, or much of anything. I'm also not completely sure of my math, but the general idea should be correct.
For most of rural Africa, the math and logic they need to get through life is limited to making trades at the market and keeping their farm running. To make a VERY broad generalization, there is little appreciation for the skills of a secondary-school education, let alone a collegiate-level software development skill set. I've seen parents yell at teachers for "wasting time" with reading.
This new work might lead to an appreciation of "white-collar" skills, diversifying the industry in the area, and providing an impetus for improvement across the whole economy... or it might just give some folks a bit more cash for a while. Either way, it's likely better than alternatives.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that the "additional costs" are where tunnels actually take the advantage.
Yes, their stations are more expensive, but they don't have to lay out tracks around mountains, avoid residential areas, or consider (much) the impact on wildlife. Tunnels don't need reinforced-embankment bridges over every waterway. They're (mostly) deep enough that their noise and vibration isn't significant. They aren't going to make any new barriers to existing traffic, human or otherwise.
What makes railway expensive isn't the labor. It's the logistics of complying with the demands of everyone and everything who might be impacted by the project. With a tunnel, much of that complexity disappears, making everything about the project more direct, including the actual route.
Why does big tech employ third-world workers to do repetitive menial tasks? Because they're cheap.
I don't think it's a bad thing. I've lived in some of the nicer areas in Africa, where $0.10 (US) buys a full meal at a restaurant. If a tech company can establish an office, and dump a few tens of thousands of dollars into their economy, those workers will be some of the wealthiest in the area.
It's a paying job, fairly stable, and less likely to kill than many other jobs in the area.
As I understand, the concept is to use high-speed tunnels to further destinations (like LA to San Diego), then slower vehicles inside the urban areas. With enough computerized control and sensors, it's possible to know precisely when a vehicle will pass through an intersection, and from that to compute how other vehicles can adjust their speed or route to ensure smooth traffic and maximum throughput.
In comparison, existing subways have very minimal sensing, with central controllers only knowing what block reports a train, and its last reported speed. Planning capabilities are limited to setting a schedule and hoping for the best. Upgrades are mostly stalled with a chicken-and-egg problem, because cities won't invest in control systems with minimal functionality, and they won't invest in sensor and train upgrades without any improvement in control.
Musk is a hype man. His standard business model is to take an existing platform, upgrade it all at once with the latest technology, and market it as a revolution. The Hyperloop is just a subway, designed and built from the ground up with modern capabilities, instead of bolting on to the systems built throughout the last century.
...competing against you with its modified version
Well, that depends on exactly what product you sell. If you're competing in selling the software, you are correct. However, note the GPL does not require publishing any changes unless the software is redistributed. If you run a hosting company, and release an open-source hosting management tool, your competitor can take it, modify it, and use it to manage their internal systems in direct competition with you, and the GPL won't affect that at all. If you want to require users to make source available, you may be looking more for something like the AGPL or a non-commercial CC license.
I don't aim to characterize the GPL in any way, favorable or not. I aim to help people understand, so they can make their own decisions about what they want. Personally, the GPL works for me, but my circumstances and philosophies don't apply universally.
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
You are missing the first point but not by much, and the second by 20 kilometers.
Perhaps if you have an actual point to make, you should state it. Asking open questions just makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about, and hope the conversation will stumble into your historical fantasy.
This is classical maxist thinking, and is ENTIRELY clueless of how the economy works. It's not about the finite products, it's about WHO produces them. If your answer is not ROBOTS then we come back to THEFT.
As I recall, Marx was actually the one who cared about who was running production.
As for robots, that's a trivial distraction. Robots are an extremely labor-efficient production tool, but they don't actually change much of the production economics. What robots save in labor, they cost in energy, maintenance, and initial investment. They also have no significant impact on the efficiency of the final product, so the resource consumption of one's lifestyle is unchanged.
The first step took about 200 years, during which time the government in charge was full of what we'd call "corruption" today. That caused some rather angry folks to sign a short document condemning that government and its practices. Shortly thereafter, many of those same angry folks wrote a larger document detailing their replacement government, designed to prevent exactly the mistreatment they had seen firsthand, perpetrated by government officials who weren't subject to the laws they enforced.
As I recall the legend, the most important thing that George Washington did was to pass the office of President peacefully over to John Adams, establishing publicly that Presidents (and by extension, all elected officials) were indeed subject to the rules of the Constitution. That vision was respected and expanded over the next 225 years or so, and the core principle of having checks and balances to prevent abuse has never really been challenged until recently.
And if you have it now, it doesn't mean it can't go poof.
Oh, it certainly can. The system only works if it is used consistently. If any branch of government refuses to act as the check on any other branch's power, it allows corruption (or even the appearance of corruption) to fester. That, in turn, lets others try increasingly-blatant corruption, continuing the downward spiral. The only solution at that point is a concerted (and very public) voting effort to remove the corrupt and negligent politicians from office.
Many times through America's history, there have been politicians who were corrupt in various ways and to various degrees. They came from all parties, and from all demographics. Eventually, they were exposed and removed from office lawfully. Faith in that process is precisely why the public can have faith in America as a nation.
YOU ARE HURTING OTHERS because you are robbing them of their reasources
That's only true if the resources and consumption are both finite and constant. While there are certainly a lot of finite resources, their consumption is usually flexible, thanks to many processes that benefit from economies of scale. A few that come to mind are shipping, logistics, infrastructure, and insurance coverage. Their efficiency increases as more people make use of the service, in many cases to the point where the per-unit cost of service is actually reduced with a higher load.
Your descendants would spit on your grave if they suffered what you would have inflicted on them.
Gee, it sure is good, then, that the left also tends to support using renewable resources and high-efficiency technology, and opposes letting the climate change unchecked. My descendants will have all the resources they need to do whatever they want to my grave.
My backstory is pretty much identical, but I've come to the opposite conclusion. I'd much rather see my small hometown get decent Internet access.
My hometown has a pretty wide income gap. Most of the kids in my high school class were setting their sights high to work in the nearby "big city" of 10K people. Most didn't go to college or any trade school, so they're almost entirely dependent on the local tourism income... which went well until around 2008, when the recession hit and tourism dropped. The only reason the town's survived is because a casino dumped a significant amount of money into community support.
Internet access is vital for connecting small towns to the rest of the world, but more importantly it connects the youth to the possibilities outside what their parents provide to them. That's what changes the "could not be better" perception, once people are aware of what the rest of the world has to offer.
humility and compassion for those that you actually see as being weak and/or stupid (everyone but you, right?).
Quite the contrary... that certainly includes me.
There are a good many fields in which I have no knowledge, to the extent that even an unguided attempt to learn might be catastrophic. An example that comes to mind is sailing. I understand the physics and concepts involved, but to go alone to open water would be irresponsibly dangerous, to the point where my adventure would just be a burden on the Coast Guard, and if they aren't fast enough to find me, it'd be a burden on my next-of-kin.
To continue the example, I am suggesting that to be permitted to sail open water, one should be required to pass a certification exam. The contents of that exam should be chosen by someone like the Coast Guard rescuers, who would be the most qualified to know what leads to catastrophe in that area.
As a species, we humans tend to look at short-term goals and easy solutions. We make choices based on emotions and ease, then when things don't fall in our favor, we blame God or other people, to avoid the fact that we did something incredibly stupid completely by our own choice.
What you see as "elitism", I'd call "meritocracy". The biggest difference is who's allowed to be in that ruling group.
In an elitist system, you're defined by how much money you have, or your family connections, or even what color your skin is. In a liberal-ideal meritocracy, absolutely anyone can get the same power as anyone else.
For example, if you want to get a college degree, there will be a way to get one, without any more hardship than anyone else would face. Scholarship grants would cover the financial cost. Access regulations ensure that your acceptance is based on test scores and grades, not whether your parents attended an ivy-league school. Once you get your degree, that's your ticket to the "elite" status. You can go and participate in any discussion those credentials would open for anyone else.
It's interesting that you've chosen Cuba and Venezuela as examples, since they highlight one of my points. Both Cuba and Venezuela have had historic endemic corruption. That public corruption undermines the effectiveness of any equality regulation, because the elite class can simply buy their way out of compliance. In American politics, open corruption is still something to be shunned on both sides of the aisle. A good example is Rod Blagojevich, whose corruption was (rightly) curtailed by the checks and balances built into the governmental system. This is what makes America a great country, where we expect corruption to be caught.
As for self-determination, that is perfectly intact in the leftist ideal. You can pursue any path you want, as long as you aren't hurting anyone else (even unintentionally). Yes, this often means a bit more hassle to run through the regulations, but in the spirit of equality, you'd have access to a government service to help you comply with the regulations. After all, it'd be unfair to expect a novice to understand and follow the same rules as someone who had grown up in the field.
Now, that also touches on another important concept: welfare. The leftest ideal also includes support for those who cannot support themselves. Again, this stems from equality. Even the poorest members of our society deserve a safety net, just as the wealthiest can afford to cover their mistakes or external catastrophe. Still in the interest of self-determination, it is up to the individual to decide whether they want to take advantage of the programs (some exceptions apply, where participation prevents harm to others).
In short, the left says "you have the opportunity to do anything except harm others", while the right says "you can do anything you can pay for". Frankly, for the sake of my descendants, I prefer the former.
Here I thought the left was against large multinational companies abusing their positions of power over regular people.
As someone who's often left-leaning, that's almost completely wrong.
The left is very much in favor of large companies (and states) having power over regular people. The key is that it's a highly-regulated power, managed by someone with the regular people's best interests in mind, because history has shown that the regular people very rarely understand how to actually accomplish their goals. Those that do aggressively pursue their goals will usually end up doing so by preventing others from pursuing theirs.
Now, on the other hand, the left is strongly opposed to anyone (company, individual, state, or otherwise) having any power that can be used to oppress anyone. If technology can silence a particular idea, then there must be rules in place to prevent its use in that way. Without those rules, the technology is better left unbuilt.
This is, of course, very idealistic. Benevolent dictators usually don't keep either adjective for long. People don't realize the negative impact until well after the damage is done. That's why the left also tends to favor bureaucracies with strong checks and balances, to prevent any individual (or small groups) from undermining the protective regulations.
It's even more terrifying that there are so many quick to support that kind of power for any kind of entity especially one without accountability or transparency.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really.
The vast majority of sales on any product is supplying industry for other projects. The 10-25% increase in a component's price just becomes a small percentage of the final product price. All together, the final assembled product is more expensive to produce, but for no directly-attributable reason. It's not "the tariff on the case". It's "parts just cost more for this batch".
Now, that takes place over a span of years, as parts work their way through supply-chain warehouses. Computers are some of the fastest-moving products, but they can still take a couple of years to move inventory from manufacturer to consumer. It's a few months at the importer, a few months at the retailer, and a few months at the assembler, but it adds up. That delay further reduces the visibility of the tariff's impact. Parts just seem to have generally-higher prices, even if they appear to come from American sources.
By the time the product gets to the consumer market, it's still listed with the usual markup, and sells at a slightly-reduced rate, but since the tariffs affect all manufacturers with American supply chains, consumers can't get a better deal by going elsewhere. Even if another manufacturer were able to sell at lower prices, they now have an option to raise their prices to keep the market status quo (which is likely right what they're tooled for and ready to produce). In short, the US manufacturers' profits are cut, and foreign manufacturers' profits grow.
My thoughts exactly.
Everyone's always willing to complain, but yet they continually want cheaper and cheaper flights, while the actual costs of operating an airline just keep rising. Customers want more destinations and more airport services. Somebody's going to be paying for that, so it comes at the cost of legroom.
As I understand, Dr. Grumpy does use the medical version.
Really, I suspect the problem is statistical. It's 99.9% accurate, but if it's transcribing 1,000 words a day, that means it still screws one up. Some days, it's funny when that happens.
That's okay! It's only 1 or 2 megawatts continuously for those 10 years!
That's only $21 million in electricity costs alone, and 100,000 metric tons of CO2 added to the atmosphere. Surely, that's a small price to pay to be good celestial neighbors...
Consider the alternative. The guy who's responsible for recording exactly what my condition is, and what my treatment plans are... does not actually have medical training?
We have that already. It's Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and an endless source of amusement is seeing how badly it misunderstands what the doctor says, because it doesn't understand the context.
For a simple example, consider the set (1,2,3).
There are of course six (3!) permutations: (1,2,3), (1,3,2), (2,1,3), (2,3,1), (3,1,2), (3,2,1)
However, those are all contained in the sequence (1,2,3,1,2,1,3,2,1), which is 9 elements long. The question is whether 9 is actually the shortest sequence, and how that extends to sets beyond three elements.
True, but it's also not formalized or rigorously defined to the degree necessary as a foundation for software development. Instead of measuring and defining risk factors and consumption rates, it's looking at a field and saying "that should be enough".
It's also worth noting that the culture is, in some ways, a lot more forgiving than Western standards. In the West, if you screw up your financial estimates, you fail, go bankrupt, sell the farm, and try to find a different job. In rural Africa, if you don't harvest enough, you beg from neighbors (or the village chief) until the next season.
It's a culture that works like insurance... unless you habitually fail so nobody will support you, and you starve. Maybe not so forgiving.
That is actually a thing.
For comparison, where I was, an average monthly wage was (at the time, in a rural area) 40 USD*. For a single company to pay an American-standard wage there would be like a company opening an American office paying an average of $7.5 million annual salary today. It sounds great, but knowing that a major employer in an area pays such high rates opens the door for local hyperinflation, because everyone who doesn't work for that company knows that the folks who do will be able to pay higher prices. Along with that inflation comes an influx of scams and crime, because the reward is worth far more than the expense of running their scam.
The most I've seen in person was a mining company that paid around $150/month on the same rural region. That's about equivalent to a $300,000 salary in America today. The results were about what's seen in San Francisco... Spiking real estate prices, heavy commuter traffic, and intense pressure to sell property and move out of the local area to cash in on the bubble.
From what I found with a quick search, the average monthly salary in Kenya is $76, which works out to about $3.50 per day. Paying $5 per day (roughly $105/month) doesn't seem that bad, superficially or not.
* All monetary amounts mentioned are US equivalent, regardless of local currency, and not adjusted for inflation, locale, industry, or much of anything. I'm also not completely sure of my math, but the general idea should be correct.
Trickle-down economics works for infrastructure, not for money.
Should we? Well, sure.
Can we? Nope.
For most of rural Africa, the math and logic they need to get through life is limited to making trades at the market and keeping their farm running. To make a VERY broad generalization, there is little appreciation for the skills of a secondary-school education, let alone a collegiate-level software development skill set. I've seen parents yell at teachers for "wasting time" with reading.
This new work might lead to an appreciation of "white-collar" skills, diversifying the industry in the area, and providing an impetus for improvement across the whole economy... or it might just give some folks a bit more cash for a while. Either way, it's likely better than alternatives.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that the "additional costs" are where tunnels actually take the advantage.
Yes, their stations are more expensive, but they don't have to lay out tracks around mountains, avoid residential areas, or consider (much) the impact on wildlife. Tunnels don't need reinforced-embankment bridges over every waterway. They're (mostly) deep enough that their noise and vibration isn't significant. They aren't going to make any new barriers to existing traffic, human or otherwise.
What makes railway expensive isn't the labor. It's the logistics of complying with the demands of everyone and everything who might be impacted by the project. With a tunnel, much of that complexity disappears, making everything about the project more direct, including the actual route.
Why does big tech employ third-world workers to do repetitive menial tasks? Because they're cheap.
I don't think it's a bad thing. I've lived in some of the nicer areas in Africa, where $0.10 (US) buys a full meal at a restaurant. If a tech company can establish an office, and dump a few tens of thousands of dollars into their economy, those workers will be some of the wealthiest in the area.
It's a paying job, fairly stable, and less likely to kill than many other jobs in the area.
As I understand, the concept is to use high-speed tunnels to further destinations (like LA to San Diego), then slower vehicles inside the urban areas. With enough computerized control and sensors, it's possible to know precisely when a vehicle will pass through an intersection, and from that to compute how other vehicles can adjust their speed or route to ensure smooth traffic and maximum throughput.
In comparison, existing subways have very minimal sensing, with central controllers only knowing what block reports a train, and its last reported speed. Planning capabilities are limited to setting a schedule and hoping for the best. Upgrades are mostly stalled with a chicken-and-egg problem, because cities won't invest in control systems with minimal functionality, and they won't invest in sensor and train upgrades without any improvement in control.
Musk is a hype man. His standard business model is to take an existing platform, upgrade it all at once with the latest technology, and market it as a revolution. The Hyperloop is just a subway, designed and built from the ground up with modern capabilities, instead of bolting on to the systems built throughout the last century.
...competing against you with its modified version
Well, that depends on exactly what product you sell. If you're competing in selling the software, you are correct. However, note the GPL does not require publishing any changes unless the software is redistributed. If you run a hosting company, and release an open-source hosting management tool, your competitor can take it, modify it, and use it to manage their internal systems in direct competition with you, and the GPL won't affect that at all. If you want to require users to make source available, you may be looking more for something like the AGPL or a non-commercial CC license.
I don't aim to characterize the GPL in any way, favorable or not. I aim to help people understand, so they can make their own decisions about what they want. Personally, the GPL works for me, but my circumstances and philosophies don't apply universally.
That's not "shady". That's explicitly allowed by the GPL, and noted fairly often in discussions about the GPL's use. If you don't like it, pick a different license for your stuff.
You are missing the first point but not by much, and the second by 20 kilometers.
Perhaps if you have an actual point to make, you should state it. Asking open questions just makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about, and hope the conversation will stumble into your historical fantasy.
This is classical maxist thinking, and is ENTIRELY clueless of how the economy works. It's not about the finite products, it's about WHO produces them. If your answer is not ROBOTS then we come back to THEFT.
As I recall, Marx was actually the one who cared about who was running production.
As for robots, that's a trivial distraction. Robots are an extremely labor-efficient production tool, but they don't actually change much of the production economics. What robots save in labor, they cost in energy, maintenance, and initial investment. They also have no significant impact on the efficiency of the final product, so the resource consumption of one's lifestyle is unchanged.
That's an interesting perspective, since it's the FCC that is in charge of actual censorship.
They're the ones who won't let you swear on broadcast television, not your local municipality.
...how do you think this came to be ?
The first step took about 200 years, during which time the government in charge was full of what we'd call "corruption" today. That caused some rather angry folks to sign a short document condemning that government and its practices. Shortly thereafter, many of those same angry folks wrote a larger document detailing their replacement government, designed to prevent exactly the mistreatment they had seen firsthand, perpetrated by government officials who weren't subject to the laws they enforced.
As I recall the legend, the most important thing that George Washington did was to pass the office of President peacefully over to John Adams, establishing publicly that Presidents (and by extension, all elected officials) were indeed subject to the rules of the Constitution. That vision was respected and expanded over the next 225 years or so, and the core principle of having checks and balances to prevent abuse has never really been challenged until recently.
And if you have it now, it doesn't mean it can't go poof.
Oh, it certainly can. The system only works if it is used consistently. If any branch of government refuses to act as the check on any other branch's power, it allows corruption (or even the appearance of corruption) to fester. That, in turn, lets others try increasingly-blatant corruption, continuing the downward spiral. The only solution at that point is a concerted (and very public) voting effort to remove the corrupt and negligent politicians from office.
Many times through America's history, there have been politicians who were corrupt in various ways and to various degrees. They came from all parties, and from all demographics. Eventually, they were exposed and removed from office lawfully. Faith in that process is precisely why the public can have faith in America as a nation.
YOU ARE HURTING OTHERS because you are robbing them of their reasources
That's only true if the resources and consumption are both finite and constant. While there are certainly a lot of finite resources, their consumption is usually flexible, thanks to many processes that benefit from economies of scale. A few that come to mind are shipping, logistics, infrastructure, and insurance coverage. Their efficiency increases as more people make use of the service, in many cases to the point where the per-unit cost of service is actually reduced with a higher load.
Your descendants would spit on your grave if they suffered what you would have inflicted on them.
Gee, it sure is good, then, that the left also tends to support using renewable resources and high-efficiency technology, and opposes letting the climate change unchecked. My descendants will have all the resources they need to do whatever they want to my grave.
My backstory is pretty much identical, but I've come to the opposite conclusion. I'd much rather see my small hometown get decent Internet access.
My hometown has a pretty wide income gap. Most of the kids in my high school class were setting their sights high to work in the nearby "big city" of 10K people. Most didn't go to college or any trade school, so they're almost entirely dependent on the local tourism income... which went well until around 2008, when the recession hit and tourism dropped. The only reason the town's survived is because a casino dumped a significant amount of money into community support.
Internet access is vital for connecting small towns to the rest of the world, but more importantly it connects the youth to the possibilities outside what their parents provide to them. That's what changes the "could not be better" perception, once people are aware of what the rest of the world has to offer.
humility and compassion for those that you actually see as being weak and/or stupid (everyone but you, right?).
Quite the contrary... that certainly includes me.
There are a good many fields in which I have no knowledge, to the extent that even an unguided attempt to learn might be catastrophic. An example that comes to mind is sailing. I understand the physics and concepts involved, but to go alone to open water would be irresponsibly dangerous, to the point where my adventure would just be a burden on the Coast Guard, and if they aren't fast enough to find me, it'd be a burden on my next-of-kin.
To continue the example, I am suggesting that to be permitted to sail open water, one should be required to pass a certification exam. The contents of that exam should be chosen by someone like the Coast Guard rescuers, who would be the most qualified to know what leads to catastrophe in that area.
As a species, we humans tend to look at short-term goals and easy solutions. We make choices based on emotions and ease, then when things don't fall in our favor, we blame God or other people, to avoid the fact that we did something incredibly stupid completely by our own choice.
What you see as "elitism", I'd call "meritocracy". The biggest difference is who's allowed to be in that ruling group.
In an elitist system, you're defined by how much money you have, or your family connections, or even what color your skin is. In a liberal-ideal meritocracy, absolutely anyone can get the same power as anyone else.
For example, if you want to get a college degree, there will be a way to get one, without any more hardship than anyone else would face. Scholarship grants would cover the financial cost. Access regulations ensure that your acceptance is based on test scores and grades, not whether your parents attended an ivy-league school. Once you get your degree, that's your ticket to the "elite" status. You can go and participate in any discussion those credentials would open for anyone else.
It's interesting that you've chosen Cuba and Venezuela as examples, since they highlight one of my points. Both Cuba and Venezuela have had historic endemic corruption. That public corruption undermines the effectiveness of any equality regulation, because the elite class can simply buy their way out of compliance. In American politics, open corruption is still something to be shunned on both sides of the aisle. A good example is Rod Blagojevich, whose corruption was (rightly) curtailed by the checks and balances built into the governmental system. This is what makes America a great country, where we expect corruption to be caught.
As for self-determination, that is perfectly intact in the leftist ideal. You can pursue any path you want, as long as you aren't hurting anyone else (even unintentionally). Yes, this often means a bit more hassle to run through the regulations, but in the spirit of equality, you'd have access to a government service to help you comply with the regulations. After all, it'd be unfair to expect a novice to understand and follow the same rules as someone who had grown up in the field.
Now, that also touches on another important concept: welfare. The leftest ideal also includes support for those who cannot support themselves. Again, this stems from equality. Even the poorest members of our society deserve a safety net, just as the wealthiest can afford to cover their mistakes or external catastrophe. Still in the interest of self-determination, it is up to the individual to decide whether they want to take advantage of the programs (some exceptions apply, where participation prevents harm to others).
In short, the left says "you have the opportunity to do anything except harm others", while the right says "you can do anything you can pay for". Frankly, for the sake of my descendants, I prefer the former.
For right-leaning social media, you have 4chan /b/ and Reddit r/The_Donald... though those might be more accurately titled anti-social media.
Here I thought the left was against large multinational companies abusing their positions of power over regular people.
As someone who's often left-leaning, that's almost completely wrong.
The left is very much in favor of large companies (and states) having power over regular people. The key is that it's a highly-regulated power, managed by someone with the regular people's best interests in mind, because history has shown that the regular people very rarely understand how to actually accomplish their goals. Those that do aggressively pursue their goals will usually end up doing so by preventing others from pursuing theirs.
Now, on the other hand, the left is strongly opposed to anyone (company, individual, state, or otherwise) having any power that can be used to oppress anyone. If technology can silence a particular idea, then there must be rules in place to prevent its use in that way. Without those rules, the technology is better left unbuilt.
This is, of course, very idealistic. Benevolent dictators usually don't keep either adjective for long. People don't realize the negative impact until well after the damage is done. That's why the left also tends to favor bureaucracies with strong checks and balances, to prevent any individual (or small groups) from undermining the protective regulations.
It's even more terrifying that there are so many quick to support that kind of power for any kind of entity especially one without accountability or transparency.
You sound like a leftist. /s
It wasn't 2%. It was 0.02%. 1/5000th of his follower count.
Sure, they could have been active participants...... but it's far more likely to have been bots, killed off in a normal purge.
Nothing significant happened.
According to the results of a quick Google search, Trump lost a maximum of 11,230 followers from his high of 55,287,639, a grand total of 0.02%.