Within the USA, the language enclaves aren’t strong enough. You might find people who can’t speak English, but there are enough people in their communities that can speak English that you can get along.

Of the countries I’ve visited so far, I find that Mexico has the strongest language barrier as Mexico is large enough to maintain an internal standard of Mexican Spanish. Outside of the northern border states, you can drive two states away in Mexico and still have people speak Spanish.

Most countries we would label as communist didn’t form as Marx expected. Marx expected relatively advanced nations to revolt and claim control over capital. Instead, most Communist revolutions occurred in generally despotic and less developed countries.

When times are good, the government can use the material improvement of people’s lives as a reason to be in power. However, if times stop being good, the government becomes more overtly autocratic to maintain control.

C.

We have known karma scores here?

I’m going to fund and build a ton of mass transit projects.

Yeah, but the question is on who verifies that they follow the law.

The discussion is about checks and balances. So what kind of checks and balances would be there?

So Watchmen watch the Watchmen?

What is to stop the one party from being captured by corporate interests?

The problem with “My First Battle” is that it looks like a very simplified version of Pokemon. You can play with those decks, but you aren’t going to be able to play a full Pokemon game with them.

If the nephew wants to play with friends, I’d look for other decks or something like Battle Academy, which will teach how to play the game but with full cards.

This is more a question regarding political organization than economic organization.

A one party state generally doesn’t provide the best checks and balances to itself.

Ask if he has a deck that he plays with.

If he does, get him some booster packs. Any recent set should do.

If he doesn’t, ask him what Pokemon or Pokemon type he likes. With that knowledge, buy him a preconstructed deck with those Pokemon in it.

I try not to think of them.

You need to analyze how you are currently spending money. You can’t know what to cut if you don’t know what can be cut.

Yeah. You’re not going to be friends with everyone from work and over sharing with some people can be a significant problem. You’ve definitely got to pick the people you want to be friends with.

I’m replying because the premise of the discussion is for the person asking the question to others if making friends from work is bad. Yes, no one is stopping me, but a third person is asking for the pros and cons and I’m responding to give that person context.

And the second part is based on how you are viewing the relationship of different people in the organization. Yes, the senior leadership sees you as a replaceable cog, but people work together with other replaceable cogs. The way you’re discussing it, it sounds like you’re taking the views of senior management and saying all the employees will act and think the same way as senior management. Which is why I brought you up; you’re a cog just the rest of them. If you’re going to assume the rest of the cogs are going to act that way, what makes you so special in that you are the only one who acts differently?

If work is so shitty, then why not have a friend too commiserate with at work?

If my coworkers are such horrible people because they work at the company I work at, what does that say about me?

But not all work relationships are between managers and direct reports. It would take a lot for me to become a friend with a manager or direct report outside of work. However, it is a lot easier if it is a coworker or someone in a different department.

I’ve made friendships that have survived leaving the workplace that I met them and I’m happy that I did it.

I’ve also worked at places where there was nobody that I could really make friends with, so I didn’t pursue any lasting friendship.

I’m not going to go out of my way to make every coworker a friend, but I feel like freezing everyone out limits the number of people with whom you can become friends.

A lot of movie directors start with commercials and music videos. It is training for making long videos by making a lot of short ones.