AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
Interesting that you clicked on this...I hope your day is going well and you're at least finding our conversation stimulating, if you're not finding it pleasant. Looking to reinforce your beliefs about about me? Dig up some dirt? Have at it! Only cowards and scam artists make their profile private.
User ID: 2897
What? He literally had his political opponent thrown in the gulag where he died. What are you on about?
Somehow 5 downvotes...For something 100% factually correct. Along with Ditto blocking me, amazing stuff really.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1d ago
Regarding "Genocide" in the middle east. The Palestinians are so notoriously terrible that none of their Muslim neighbors will take them in. When they have allowed large numbers of Palestinian refugees in they have attempted coups and caused mass social unrest.
The whole situation is terrible for the current children and the people that have been brought up in slums with no real education or hope, just indoctrination and hate. Palestine is the Haiti of the Middle East, a failed "state" that produces nothing but chaos and violence. Who's fault is that? I would say at this point it doesn't matter. It is what it is.
The whole conflict has become a blood feud over the last 80 years, "both sides" have committed untold atrocities, it does not seem like accommodation can be found. The Arab Muslims have been trying to destroy the Jewish settlers since they started gathering in the area and forming militias, the problem for them is, the Jews kept winning, and appear to be doing so again.
Any one of the surrounding Arab countries that claim to hate Israel could offer to take them in and end this once and for all, but they are a useful meat shield and prop to help with their goal of wreaking Israel, plus, as I mentioned above, they are terrible guests.
I really wish there just wasn't any oil in the middle east and we not hear about it for decades on end on all news outlets. I'm burnt out on the whole region, forgive my incoming uncouth distain, but all those shithole fanatically religious countries deserve each other after failing to evolve (or devolving) for so long.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1d ago
What? You didn't answer my question in any way shape or form. If you can't tell one country from another and what is better about some of them then what are you even here to discuss?
Well that is a pretty uncharitable way to put things. I'm to the right of most of my social circle but I'm to the left of whatever this place is turning into. People just get sick of getting downvoted and unable to post in real time, eventually they say something rude and get banned or they say "fuck it" and leave.
When the conversation turns to being worried about trump picking his VP based on possible assassination, putting guns in holes as a generational family gun stash in your back yard, "powers that be" conspiring to eliminate people like you, heavily downvoting someone pointing out having sex with blackout drunk people is probably wrong, being afraid to leave your red state for fear of being locked up for defending yourself, practicing religion harder being the only answer to societal ills, women only being truly happy barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen....I mean the parody starts to write itself at some point.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1d ago
Can you explain what makes Dallas such a different and difficult rental market from a self management perspective?
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
6d ago
Lol now TheMotte is getting into trump assassination territory....Should I stop coming here and start watching fox news?
Well it is make believe to start. How would you react to being asked why the 3 little pigs were a not solution to societal ills?
Also the countries that have tried that are all total shitholes. Been to a theocracy lately? Not great.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
7d ago
I'm 100% with yah on this. Even my little city up here in the corner of the country is getting bankrupted by lying "asylum seekers" that are 100% economic migrants gaming the system. I hate it. I can't believe people are letting it happen and even cheering it on.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
I'm 100% with you except for the massive fraud stuff. This political witch hunt is setting up banana republic style precedents where if you want to stay out of jail after your time in power you must remain in power forever... It is terrible for the country. The US election process is pretty safe and accurate though and the stolen election stuff is just wrong.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
Spicy stuff somedude! That Huxley line was gold, I just had a hearty chuckle re-reading it, -20 just proved my point. If I'm not wrong you've also just overstepped somewhat and there is a modpost incoming.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
4d ago
The twisting to come to this conclusion is almost head spinning. I hear what you're saying from a 10,000 foot level, but the boots on the ground reality does not match with your assessment of this hypothetical. Some regimes and societies are better to live in than others. That is just a fact. If you would rather live under Stalin than Obama then I don't think anyone can have a real conversation with you unless you're a hard core USSR stan.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
Speaking of magical thinking. To quote Who's Line is it Anyway? "Everything's made up and the points don't matter". Debt is just a human construct. When you see people wax on about there being 200 trillion in ghost credit default swaps ready to doom the world economy when a butterfly in China's housing market flaps its wings it is hard not to just dismiss it all out of hand. MMT is, I think, a result of some institutions evolving to understand and use this concept. If we have the raw resources and the might to decide how they get divvied up, the rest is just semantics.
How about a more extreme example then rather than just the revealed preference as shown by the Berlin wall needing to be put up. Just about anyone in the world would rather live in the USA than Bangladesh. One country and society is obviously better by any reasonable metric I can personally think of. Just because both governments may do something you don't like doesn't make them the same.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
I've never posted ironically. I stand behind every post I've made. Unlike those of you who hide their posting history.
Missing the forest for the trees here don't you think? I'm using the term gulag because that is what the Russian prison system and work camps were called in western media for decades, no need for quotes. If you mix in some forced labor and politically motivated charges then you've got yourself a gulag. So if they had Trump breaking rocks and cutting lumber and he got sick from being outside in the winter then yeah it would be an American gulag. The term is still used as a mildly derogatory nod towards Russian notions of justice. The gulag is bad, but not as bad as suffering from the one of the rash of defenestrations that seem to come for you if you badmouth the boss man.
That is what initially attracted to me to this space and why I was very excited about it. I'm just sad to slowly watch it turn from a rat adjacent discussion forum into more of a bog standard Tucker Carlson talking point partisan space. Maybe not in all the comments (yet), but the votes are there to turn it into an echo chamber once all the non-conformists are driven off. A right wing "Shit post" even one that catches a mod ban, will get 30 upvotes while a well thought out slightly to the left posing will usually be in the negative. The writing is on the wall and I'm unsure as to why I'm fighting against it.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
2d ago
Being a "True Opponent" of either Putin (and establishment in Russia) or Obama (and establishment in US) does not have the same result. So by "True Opponent", what do you mean exactly?
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
2d ago
Good writeup of basic economic policy and how it could impact currency valuations. Yes this is what happens when a place like Mexico or Venezuela starts reneging on their promises or nationalizing industries, capital flight, to places like the USA! Even it times of total crisis for the whole world, like in 2010, capital still came here and the value of the Dollar actually went up.
Yes if we nationalized every company and didn't pay out investors, stopped paying our debts etc....overnight. The value of the dollar would crater, It would be bad for the future of America, but now I that I'm thinking about it, what is the total value of all assets in the USA? 135 Trillion according to a quick search. That is enough to give every man woman and child ownership over $400,000 dollars (in assets) So a family of four would get $1.6 Million. So it could be an attractive short term play for a certain "Pay me now" segment of the population.
I'm not advocating for anything like that. What I've been saying here all along that within this new landscape of worldwide fiat currencies MMT is the only way to play. You don't go back to a gold or crypto deflationary hoarding mentality where the economy is constrained by tokens of wealth.(This caused a few major problems in the past if you recall)
You treat money like what it is, an idea to be experimented and played with for the betterment of your country, to get the most real resources for the least value in return. To do otherwise is to place your country at a major handicap for no reason other than stubbornness. As I have pointed out several times the USA is uniquely positioned to take this theory as far as it can be pushed due among other things to the complete financial, technical and military dominance that has allowed it to become the world's #1 reserve currency.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
I don't want left leaning posts. I want rational posts!!!! I want hot takes on current events from a reasonable and objective body of smart people. Not this partisan shit. It just makes me upset and mad at what it could have been, and what it has been when in full form. I occasionally have been able to come on here and the former sub for some of the smartest and most informative information available anywhere on the planet.
Maybe the news is too slow now and it is impacting the quality of the posts, maybe it is ideological drift or capture, all I know is I'm not getting the discourse I would expect from a forum that perhaps I saw as a more august body than it was.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
They aren't.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
5d ago
I know you don't like deficit spending, but I don't think I was particularly rude or dismissive in that recent exchange. I didn't accuse you of magical thinking as you accused me for disagreeing on monetary policy (I save that for the religious debates where I am summarily chastised). I feel that budget hawks continually underestimate the power of extend and pretend, and we may, in fact, be able to do it forever.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
8d ago
The great thing about printing money here in America is that we are the USA USA USA baby! Everyone takes our dollar, they take it for oil, for oranges, for tungsten, for cars, for iphones. We print it up out of thin air and they give us real goods for it every day.
The higher the trade deficit the more they are getting ripped off by exchanging real goods for dollars. Even with all the printing we are still experiencing a strong dollar and less inflation compared to other countries that don't have the backing of the US economy and 11 carrier strike groups.
Look at any currency vs the US dollar over the last 4 years. The dollar is as strong as it has ever been. MMT is a brilliant scheme for extracting real material and goods from the rest of the world in exchange for protection and promises. It is crazy that we get away with it! USA USA USA!
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
4d ago
Poker is a solved game so it is all scams now if you're not playing in person. The rake will just eat you. You can try tournaments but the result will be the same over a longer timeline.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
4d ago
The trailers looked really CGI, so I wasn't going to give it a shot. Now I will. Thanks for the recommendation.
So you're free to kill jaywalkers like you're in the purge? I see a lot wrong with this view. Any deviation from lawful norms should not be death. How about if a kid wanders into a neighborhood road after a ball? Free to run him down on purpose?
"I'm going to run over children and make the families pay me for the privilege!" seems like a bad platform to run for office on.
We're all in this life together. I only live every day because some asshole doesn't decide to cross the center line on my commute and kill us both at a combined speed of 120 mph. We live by the grace of others. Always.
More options
Context Copy link