I was actually thinking about what it would take to have a truly peer to peer video site. Have clients simultaneously consume, serve and transcode content. It would obviously be concentrated in the hands of big enthusiasts and small video companies, but presumably it would be similar to the fediverse where you can choose from many instances.

While there were issues with the way things were done with vaccination, you have to understand why it even got there. We had a situation where people were unreasonably made scared of vaccines which were by every metric substantially safer for the general population than the side effects. If right wingers convinced the population that they should do 150mph in a school zone and this is fine behavior because speed limits are a conspiracy and crashing into someone else doesn’t actually hurt them, how would you deal with this? I don’t think there are any good answers here, but the vaccines were better than not, and you need herd immunity for things to get better. And again, forcing people who can get vaccinated to get vaccinated, with overwhelming evidence that this was safer for everyone involved, is not the same as exile or imprisonment based on political beliefs.

How far did they even go? Forcing people to stay home and wear masks during a pandemic is not the same as saying you want to exile leftists(which FYI trump did say). They are not equivalent and being unaware of that is dangerous.

It’s definitely going to be the far right who will throw people into camps if we get there. The most far left politicians in the US rarely if ever advocate targeting individual right wingers, but I can name a few far right politicians with substantial followings that suggested punishing people who disagree with them. I don’t have a lot of love for democratic politicians in the US but they don’t seem like a possible near term threat to people’s safety, they just won’t stand in the way of the people who are.

There’s also the centralization advantage and long lifespan. Centralized power generation is nearly always most efficient, and EV batteries degrade relatively quickly, while there are real life examples of 30 year old trolleybuses still operating fine.

My opinion on that is that someone would’ve done what musk have money for at some point as well. All of those companies were mostly rehashed concepts that became viable due to faster computers, better materials, and better battery technology. I usually don’t say this about actual inventions made by scientists and engineers, but most of the time billionaires just provide a concept and daddy’s money and that really doesn’t take a lot of skills that I think are worth anything.