Its been in beta for a while, eventually they'll run out of VC funding.
Fuck Israel
Damn hipsters
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55447557
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55447557
Fuck Israel
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/0 … ntarctica/
great essay in the latest NYRB on richard j. evans latest book. RJE is probably one of the pre-eminent modern historians working today.
great essay in the latest NYRB on richard j. evans latest book. RJE is probably one of the pre-eminent modern historians working today.
You'd be amazed at the conspiracies you don't even know about.
Fuck Israel
You've seen how fat we are we don't need a right to food
Imagine in 1000 years when the proto-human anthropologists link the fall of America to widespread disinformation and ignorance.
I often think about a question Jared Diamond puts forth in Collapse. I dont have the book in front of me for the exact quote, but it was along the lines of "what were the people of Easter Island thinking as they chopped down their last tree?" The answer today seems to be "capitalism will figure it out", and that's just not a good enough answer for me based on 150 years of economic history.
I think there needs to be discussion around the stark reality of the world as currently ordered, with historical context for added color. It's a very simple question to the rich- would you rather have your wealth taxed, or would you rather be hanged in public? The first option is my preference, but historically the second option has seen better results.
Redistribution of wealth downwards is the simplest solution, but it's not the only one.
I often think about a question Jared Diamond puts forth in Collapse. I dont have the book in front of me for the exact quote, but it was along the lines of "what were the people of Easter Island thinking as they chopped down their last tree?" The answer today seems to be "capitalism will figure it out", and that's just not a good enough answer for me based on 150 years of economic history.
I think there needs to be discussion around the stark reality of the world as currently ordered, with historical context for added color. It's a very simple question to the rich- would you rather have your wealth taxed, or would you rather be hanged in public? The first option is my preference, but historically the second option has seen better results.
Redistribution of wealth downwards is the simplest solution, but it's not the only one.
imagine being the richest nation in the history of the world and also the only civilization thus far in the world who thinks food should be optional according to your ability to pay.
it's amazing to me that the society/societies which did things like develop the green revolution, pioneering agricultural technologies that have rescued billions of people from famine and starvation, also think it's anathema to feed the poor in their own back yard.
it's amazing to me that the society/societies which did things like develop the green revolution, pioneering agricultural technologies that have rescued billions of people from famine and starvation, also think it's anathema to feed the poor in their own back yard.
Last edited by uziq (2020-12-29 11:32:55)
That doesn't really surprise me. American ethos from the get go was rugged individualism. We don't have the benefit of generational experiences in our collective psyche to act as a lighthouse for our morals, and the dominant Christian thought in America is evangelical prosperity gospel. It leads to a culture where people are led to believe if you just work hard, you'll get everything you need, and if you're already there, it's because God is rewarding you and you deserve every fucking cent.
The American Hegemony is over, and I hope it turns out to be a good thing. Let China prostrate themselves on the world stage for a while. Add some new boys to the Imperialism club while we have a prolonged American Spa Day. A mental health decade for Americans.
The American Hegemony is over, and I hope it turns out to be a good thing. Let China prostrate themselves on the world stage for a while. Add some new boys to the Imperialism club while we have a prolonged American Spa Day. A mental health decade for Americans.
The way China is going I'm not positive they will survive the century intact either. Fascist dictatorships do not provide a succesful recipe for longevity.
The west does need to work out the kinks in its system or succumb to them. Both economic and governmentally.
Whatever the case though capitalism and the governing system of nation states are here to stay I think.
The west does need to work out the kinks in its system or succumb to them. Both economic and governmentally.
Whatever the case though capitalism and the governing system of nation states are here to stay I think.
europe has been a thing in its current form for, what, 40 or 50 years? and it’s fraying at the edges, populists and demagogues in poland/hungary etc. are holding it ransom, it’s too big to let its insolvent southern member states go bust ... etc. and yet you talk with this adopted tone of sage, diplomatic wisdom, as if the EU is surely and without doubt the next evolution in politics towards some liberal tomorrow.
fascist dictatorships, empires, one-party states, kingdoms etc. lasted for hundreds of years in antiquity and up through to modern history. north korea has lasted longer than the EU at this point, just to give one dynasty that’s running alongside you.
china is far and away the most offensive and odious power in the world today; id love to see it fall. but i can’t stand this centrist, fukuyama-lite triumphalism that technocrats boast in the west. people of your bent also predicted that putin’s russia would collapse, libya would be better without gaddafi, iraq could be astroturfed and peppered with taco bells ...
fascist dictatorships, empires, one-party states, kingdoms etc. lasted for hundreds of years in antiquity and up through to modern history. north korea has lasted longer than the EU at this point, just to give one dynasty that’s running alongside you.
china is far and away the most offensive and odious power in the world today; id love to see it fall. but i can’t stand this centrist, fukuyama-lite triumphalism that technocrats boast in the west. people of your bent also predicted that putin’s russia would collapse, libya would be better without gaddafi, iraq could be astroturfed and peppered with taco bells ...
Last edited by uziq (2020-12-29 12:43:24)
Of course China won't survive- it's kind of an inevitability that all current iterations of all states will cease to exist at some point, right? And we have enough material to understand how authoritarian regimes fare, regardless of their want or ability to control their populations.
I have a hard disagree with capitalism being here to stay. It's only been around a few hundred years! The question is who will determine the structure of the next system and how will it be structured, not what it will be called. The allocation and hoarding of resources and capital to promote growth is a thing of the past. The world doesn't operate economically along those lines anymore. Fractional Reserve banking, fiat currency systems, high frequency trading, hedge funds, and incestuous relationships between financial institutions, are all examples (of which there are many more) of how financial markets have outgrown capitalism. Global markets and freedom of movement have changed the economic landscape far beyond what our current system can manage.
Government action like Dodd-Frank, Glass Steagall, the formation of the CFPB are clear examples of stop-gap measures on capitalism. We've been trying to massage the knots out for over 100 years in America, and the global economy is trending towards American capitalism, not away from it.
Quality of Life will have to go down for some people. Should it be a burden on the middle class or the global aristocracy? I think you can tell where I land on that question.
I have a hard disagree with capitalism being here to stay. It's only been around a few hundred years! The question is who will determine the structure of the next system and how will it be structured, not what it will be called. The allocation and hoarding of resources and capital to promote growth is a thing of the past. The world doesn't operate economically along those lines anymore. Fractional Reserve banking, fiat currency systems, high frequency trading, hedge funds, and incestuous relationships between financial institutions, are all examples (of which there are many more) of how financial markets have outgrown capitalism. Global markets and freedom of movement have changed the economic landscape far beyond what our current system can manage.
Government action like Dodd-Frank, Glass Steagall, the formation of the CFPB are clear examples of stop-gap measures on capitalism. We've been trying to massage the knots out for over 100 years in America, and the global economy is trending towards American capitalism, not away from it.
Quality of Life will have to go down for some people. Should it be a burden on the middle class or the global aristocracy? I think you can tell where I land on that question.
i think larssen’s viewpoint comes very much from the perspective of someone grounded in statecraft and these sorts of high-european theories of diplomacy, everything from metternich to de tocqueville.
the problem is, the state and nation has totally rescinded its power to the market and capitalism in the last 50 years. unless the state tries to reassert itself as an entity, or even transnational entities if you will, all this optimism and faith in rules, law-based societies, diplomacy and consensus etc is irrelevant. capitalism is grinding all that up for bonemeal.
the problem is, the state and nation has totally rescinded its power to the market and capitalism in the last 50 years. unless the state tries to reassert itself as an entity, or even transnational entities if you will, all this optimism and faith in rules, law-based societies, diplomacy and consensus etc is irrelevant. capitalism is grinding all that up for bonemeal.
That's true regarding the subservience of the nation state to global capitalism. I think Picketty was the last one I read to bring up this point- that a government's effectiveness is directly tied to it's ability to tax, and the creation of international tax havens has led to more sovereign debt than governments can handle in the long term. Whether or not diplomacy can resolve that is an open question, but there is an inflection point where the nation state becomes unable to control concentrated capital. I think we are still a few decades away at minimum, but in the US we have been trending towards giving private business the same rights as citizens, which is a clear canary in the mineshaft regarding concentrated capital wresting government away from "the people". "One person, one vote" is being usurped by "one dollar, one vote ".
Imagine instead of the massive food waste at American supermarkets they would instead put aging produce and products out into a free bin for poor people to come fish out of.
Lifting yourself up by the bootstraps is probably easier if you're not dying.
Lifting yourself up by the bootstraps is probably easier if you're not dying.
Uh, nowhere did I mention the EU yet. It's an experiment, a good one of which I do think it's a possible way forward, but an experiment still nonetheless.
The reason I'm saying the system of nation states is here to stay is because it is globally completely entrenched. Statehood is the key to the international arena and diplomacy, to the international economy, and most importantly to legitimacy in the eyes of all the other countries on the planet. States can engage in international relations and can levy taxes, have law giving powers, can form armies etc. All of this is the bedrock of all national and international law. To think this system is to upend and cease to exist .. well I'd tell you that's a fantasy. It would have to be an end-of-days sort of scenario if government and state as we know it stop being.
Yes, global capital markets are weighing down on that system of nation states and it's proven that some countries are completely in the throes of multinational corporations, or that some corporations are even more powerful than states. But this isn't a wholly new phenomenon either. During the colonial era there were several private companies with enormous powers. They had near if not total monopolies, undertook their own expeditions and even had their own armies. But the one thing they did not have was legislative power, and national authorities always asserted their control over these actors sooner or later.
What's new in this day and age is that the system has expanded significantly and the chaos of the market can't be easily controlled by any one state actor, save for the largest such as China and the United States, which I don't really think can be called 'nation states' in the classical sense. A solution to this issue for the smaller, traditional westphalian/weberian states is a platform like the EU; through international, law-making, supranational entities they again assert their power over all aspects of statehood, including economies and markets, mostly through legislative and regulatory ability. Even the 'giants' of capitalism like Amazon and Google have to submit to this reality, and while you could argue some private sector effectiveness through lobbyism or borderline monopolism, at the end of the day it's the 27 member states who sit at the table in the council and who, with the EC, have the prerogative to decide access, taxation & regulations on everything really.
Superimposed on that system is global capitalism. And no, I don't think that's going to fundamentally change either. The only way it might 'change' is if a regional actor more or less recreates an iron curtain and refuses to play by the international capitalist rules within its territory, a la the soviet union. But that change would be regional and confined to that area. In the west, and for everyone else, I can't see a path to a complete rethink of how the market functions. We may make it fairer, by reigning in its excesses, closing taxation loopholes, perhaps rethinking parts of the stock market, things like that. But the concept of private companies and for-profit enterprise are not going to disappear I reckon. It's the distribution of that profit or our relation to that private property which is the question of our time. Perhaps you may be able to denote that which comes after as 'post-capitalist', but there's certainly still going to be fundamental elements of capitalism in there.
I also don't envision the possibility of some revolution like we can read about at various points in history either. Fact of the matter is that the capacity for elite control of a much larger population is greater than ever because of all the technological progress between the age of the musket and now. The truth is that a citizens revolt has very little hope of succeeding in the era of APCs, drones and AI. Any revolution would have to come from within, and as the soviet union taught us, systems can collapse under their own weight/failures perfectly well too.
The reason I'm saying the system of nation states is here to stay is because it is globally completely entrenched. Statehood is the key to the international arena and diplomacy, to the international economy, and most importantly to legitimacy in the eyes of all the other countries on the planet. States can engage in international relations and can levy taxes, have law giving powers, can form armies etc. All of this is the bedrock of all national and international law. To think this system is to upend and cease to exist .. well I'd tell you that's a fantasy. It would have to be an end-of-days sort of scenario if government and state as we know it stop being.
Yes, global capital markets are weighing down on that system of nation states and it's proven that some countries are completely in the throes of multinational corporations, or that some corporations are even more powerful than states. But this isn't a wholly new phenomenon either. During the colonial era there were several private companies with enormous powers. They had near if not total monopolies, undertook their own expeditions and even had their own armies. But the one thing they did not have was legislative power, and national authorities always asserted their control over these actors sooner or later.
What's new in this day and age is that the system has expanded significantly and the chaos of the market can't be easily controlled by any one state actor, save for the largest such as China and the United States, which I don't really think can be called 'nation states' in the classical sense. A solution to this issue for the smaller, traditional westphalian/weberian states is a platform like the EU; through international, law-making, supranational entities they again assert their power over all aspects of statehood, including economies and markets, mostly through legislative and regulatory ability. Even the 'giants' of capitalism like Amazon and Google have to submit to this reality, and while you could argue some private sector effectiveness through lobbyism or borderline monopolism, at the end of the day it's the 27 member states who sit at the table in the council and who, with the EC, have the prerogative to decide access, taxation & regulations on everything really.
Superimposed on that system is global capitalism. And no, I don't think that's going to fundamentally change either. The only way it might 'change' is if a regional actor more or less recreates an iron curtain and refuses to play by the international capitalist rules within its territory, a la the soviet union. But that change would be regional and confined to that area. In the west, and for everyone else, I can't see a path to a complete rethink of how the market functions. We may make it fairer, by reigning in its excesses, closing taxation loopholes, perhaps rethinking parts of the stock market, things like that. But the concept of private companies and for-profit enterprise are not going to disappear I reckon. It's the distribution of that profit or our relation to that private property which is the question of our time. Perhaps you may be able to denote that which comes after as 'post-capitalist', but there's certainly still going to be fundamental elements of capitalism in there.
I also don't envision the possibility of some revolution like we can read about at various points in history either. Fact of the matter is that the capacity for elite control of a much larger population is greater than ever because of all the technological progress between the age of the musket and now. The truth is that a citizens revolt has very little hope of succeeding in the era of APCs, drones and AI. Any revolution would have to come from within, and as the soviet union taught us, systems can collapse under their own weight/failures perfectly well too.
Last edited by Larssen (2020-12-29 15:03:38)
Capitalism has been around forever, at least as long as the world has had jews.
Supposed free-market capitalism is a recent experiment which is trending towards plutocracy as capitalism always does, as the people with capital find ways to game the system in their favour as they always do.
If we don't get a lid on tax evasion by the rich and only the poor paying we will have a plutocracy and/or a revolution.
Supposed free-market capitalism is a recent experiment which is trending towards plutocracy as capitalism always does, as the people with capital find ways to game the system in their favour as they always do.
If we don't get a lid on tax evasion by the rich and only the poor paying we will have a plutocracy and/or a revolution.
Fuck Israel
Thats a legal reequirement in some euro-fag countries IIRCunnamednewbie13 wrote:
Imagine instead of the massive food waste at American supermarkets they would instead put aging produce and products out into a free bin for poor people to come fish out of.
Fuck Israel
Capitalism is more than "people buying and selling stuff" and the existence of private, for-profit enterprise. Not really a rabbit hole id like to go down, but it's important to make clear what is being critiqued here. Trade and private enterprise have been around since the dawn of time. Funny how it took so long to define it as capitalism, then?
I think there's some narrow-mindedness in aligning with the idea that "as it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end" in regards to the creation and dissolution of nation states. While there is a sense of optimism in that thought, I think it's generally a dismissal of the complexity of how the world is ordered, with multiple systems all competing for power and relevancy. Sure, organization is a backbone of human society, but priorities have changed many times over the years. Moving forward as a more global society may bring about the desire to change priorities based on global sized groups, not smaller in-groups separated by cultural or demographic of geographic borders.
I think there's some narrow-mindedness in aligning with the idea that "as it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end" in regards to the creation and dissolution of nation states. While there is a sense of optimism in that thought, I think it's generally a dismissal of the complexity of how the world is ordered, with multiple systems all competing for power and relevancy. Sure, organization is a backbone of human society, but priorities have changed many times over the years. Moving forward as a more global society may bring about the desire to change priorities based on global sized groups, not smaller in-groups separated by cultural or demographic of geographic borders.
Corporations have moved on from being people and are now nation states.
I look forward to Amazon and Alibaba taking up arms against each other.
I look forward to Amazon and Alibaba taking up arms against each other.
Fuck Israel
I'm not sure our psyche can really cope with globally dispersed groups beyond national/business relations. There's some attempts at global political or social mobilisation, but even in the more succesful forms (such as religion) you see strong divergence among followers rather quickly as they're all separately stuck in their own social/economic/cultural/political sphere.
As for these competing with nation states; nope. No chance a cross border entity can claim political autonomy. They'll be considered militant separatists everywhere. A cross-border interest group or political party, perhaps, and there's examples of this (again, mostly in Europe)
As for these competing with nation states; nope. No chance a cross border entity can claim political autonomy. They'll be considered militant separatists everywhere. A cross-border interest group or political party, perhaps, and there's examples of this (again, mostly in Europe)
These various entities can dictate to govts that they're not going to pay tax, who gets free speech, what business models are going to be destroyed, who has their election manipulated, who they're going to start a war with etc.
News Corp has been doing this for decades, facebook has moved up
News Corp has been doing this for decades, facebook has moved up
Fuck Israel
Nation states will never cease to exist because there are nation states. Interesting argument.
As soon as nations agglomerate they start to fracture, thats how history works.
Fuck Israel
There's a bit more nuance than that, but generally I agree