I refuse Discord after eventually having every account get blocked pending phone-number verification. In my country that's effectively KYC (impossible to get a SIM card without govt ID).
Depending on IP and usage, this may happen at any point between registration and several years later.
If you're curious, a book The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist goes over many of the differences in "personality" of each hemisphere which is not as simple of a divide as is commonly heard. It is not so much a logic vs. feeling/art split but maybe more of an isolation/abstraction vs. broad/networked default mode for each.
And this Kei Truck response is a good example of how a market (free or not), while seeking to find all profits, uncovers an unmet need in the market and adapts for the mutual benefit of the consumers And the producers.
You find this everywhere there is a centralized "authority". Incumbants use every trick to keep their tribe in power at the expense of what that central power was nominally "supposed to do".
The purpose of the system is what it does. The purpose of seemingly all regulatory institutions is to gain and maintain power for the tribe in power.
I mean not really since they are imported used vehicles from Japan
These trucks are illegal to sell new in the states
Japanese producers aren’t designing these vehicles with American second hand JDM import buyers in mind
Kei-truck manufacturers make no profit off this US uptick and consumers are at best irritated and at worst paying import fees because their domestic producers refuse to meet their needs and force them to cough up more cash for a vacuously useful and environmentally harmful oversized utility vehicles
Markets can work, this is a clear example of it breaking down (for the US) and a sign the government should step in to steer the - arguably flailing - market
You're suggesting government step in and stop the market from adapting around existing regulation? But that's how we got where we are right now. If government weren't in the way we'd have even more happy buyers.
You point out US consumers might be annoyed at bad local options and are looking elsewhere then suggest that this is a failure of the market when in fact it is this market action that permits the consumer to find a better solution for their problems. All government can do if they "step in" is make this even harder.
You are making it sound like the Kei market makes more than just a very very tiny portion of total sold trucks in the US. Its not, it is very much a niche market.
To be clear, the small number is the amount of people who are willing to jump through hoops and legal loopholes to actually import one. The actual number of people who would chose one of these over a Ford at their local dealer is likely orders of magnitude higher.
To be clear you are completely materializing that without any data. The data we do have are import numbers. You say it’s a lot of hoops but looks like you can buy one of these sub 10k from an importer. No hoops and in a reasonable price point. Supply and import demand paints the picture.
> And yet we're discussing the phenomenon online and arguing about it on our niche platform..
What is your point? I am simply stating that you are overstating the actual market share of this demand. I don't disagree, modern trucks are comically too large but Kei trucks are not a response to it.
Germany and Japan were killing millions of innocents in WW2. Not only that, but those killings were entirely unnecessary.
At least with Israel I can give some of the benefit of the doubt that their civilian casualties have some strategic outcome. You cannot say the same of Germany and Japan in WW2.
(please be charitable to the above; there is a lot of nuance here; I don't want to explicitly spell it all out. look at my other comments if you want to know my views)
I think optics of being advanced aren't the main goal. Some form of "justification", no matter how flimsy, especially if it's hard to audit how the "AI" came to it's conclusions, is the goal. Now anyone is a target. Similar to cops in the US "smelling weed" or dogs "signaling". It provides the means to justify any search, or in this case, any kill. The machine grinds away..
It's more than open source. A political party I tried to join organized via Discord. A hardware project offered support only through Discord. Seems most "communities" have one now. But I hate Discord and it's a poor tool for those jobs! A subreddit might have been better as I wouldn't need an account to view proir posts for troubleshooting, or organizing meetings.
