JTarrou
1d ago
Unless our current model of physics is totally wrong, space will not be a population frontier, ever. The real answer is, of course, violence. As national governments reduce violence, they reduce their own capacity for it, which inflates the value. Eventually the value gets high enough and the numbers of people who can produce it low enough that the two meet and a revolution, coup or invasion happens. This is almost always a losing proposition for the country in question, but it offers a platform to try radical new things, and the ones that work get more widely adopted.
The French Revolution was a disaster for France, and most of Europe. Most of their innovations were insane bullshit and were swiftly forgotten. But they did fix a bunch of issues with the legacy legal system and spread that to most of Europe, giving the continent a much better set of legal standards which contributed to trade, diplomacy and the eventual peace and unity of Europe. Just needed a dozen major wars, two world wars, a few genocides and a lot of ethnic cleansing to shake it all out.
Progress is produced in blood, not economics, philosophy or science. In the most anti-progressive and civilizationally corrosive manner. "Creative destruction" as an economist might say. It is by this bloody cycle that humanity progresses.
JTarrou
2d ago
Confucius say if you wait by the river, the bodies of your ops float by eventually. Or something.
JTarrou
2d ago
There's many layers of institutional power that don't just disappear, even after GDP dips and direct international influence wanes. Over time these erode in a failing society, but parts may last a long time. As an example, English being the lingua franca of the world isn't because Britain is so powerful right at this moment, but the fact that it is gives Britain more power than it would otherwise. Britain will always have an outsize influence through the language alone as long as this is the case.
European societies are broadly in a bad way compared to their recent relative status, but they remain advanced societies with great technical expertise and ability to organize along national lines. Most of them remain nations in a way nothing on the African continent or much of asia can possibly match. Nothing is irreparable, but it remains to be seen if their elites will change course by some means and hold to that policy. I'm guessing the answers will be uneven at best. Europe will likely be dominated by the first large country to fix their current malaise for some time.
JTarrou
2d ago
Eh, I mean look at Remington and Winchester. Both being run as budget brands and getting hosed by Savage.
JTarrou
3d ago
The allegation is weak, but added to the others might be enough to sink Platner. I think it's a ratfuck by the Democrats, and so does Freddie DeBoer. Doesn't mean it isn't also true.
My hot take? The Dems have spent so much time equating masculinity with toxicity that when they had to pivot to appeal to men, this is what they came up with. "How do you do, fellow Nazi Rapists!"
In a purely political sense, this is one long series of unforced errors which is deconstructing the moral authority of the party/movement (such as it was). Platner still hasn't faced a Republican. This is all inter-Dem infighting, with popcorn on the right.
JTarrou
3d ago
There's a lifecycle produced by higher-level capitalization. You have a company, you build a reputation for quality, value, service, whatever. You grow this company into a major success. Then you die/retire/sell. New company comes in, they want to make money off your reputation. They cut whatever it was that made your product successful, first a bit, then a lot. They switch suppliers, use inferior materials, drive out all the old skilled labor, outsource, etc.
The old reputation is sticky. If your product isn't something people buy with great regularity, it may take decades or even centuries for that reputation to fall to its proper place. My relative expertise here is firearms companies. Colt, for instance, the most iconic American gun brand. They haven't made a profitable new firearm since the 1930s, and the old company went under in teh 1980s, even with the military contracts. It's a brand name owned by a series of shell corporations that produces garbage knock-offs of old Colt designs that retards think is still Sam Colt's own shop. Anyone who knows guns knows Colts suck and have for a century. And yet every month you'll see the newest model Colt in every gun magazine, dipshits in trailer parks the nation over will jerk off in their basketball shorts over it, and even bigger dipshits will actually buy them.
JTarrou
6d ago
I very much agree. This is how skint mexicans can afford to come here and work for pennies on the dollar and raise a dozen kids. They value different things and are willing to live differently.
As to the trappings of merit versus its reality, that's the question isn't it? We target things that seem to be part of merit, but every proxy creates an incentive to game it. Everyone likes a meritocracy until it's time to define what merit actually is.
You debate it. Unless our current physics is very wrong, space will not be a population frontier, ever. Hibernation? Of humans? At scale?
It's a lot of handwaving to get out of the psychological reality that earth is a zero sum game and it's the only game in town. Believe what you will, interstellar colonization is as real as the divinity of Jesus, as belief systems go.
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