FtSoA
1mo ago
The YIMBY/Abundance types will constantly point out that this was a policy/culture choice that happened in the latter part of the 20th century.
We used to be just fine at massive public works projects, including railroads.
It's not an inherent feature of the common law, and in fact typically involves the violation of property rights due to e.g. environmental concerns. What changed is the regulatory environment.
Nothing proves this more than the fact it is extremely difficult to build green energy in California because of environmental regulations.
FtSoA
1mo ago
I'm not MAGA, but if I were, I'd think it was probably time to use the 25th Amendment to get President Vance.
Obviously, that's not gonna happen.
(I also thought the GOP should have been fine removing Trump last time to get President Pence. And the same for Biden and Kamala. No one listens to my great ideas.)
FtSoA
1mo ago
You do realize we were funding and backing a lot of the resistance the Soviets faced in Afghanistan, right?
The real growth in Communism didn't come from Soviet tanks imposing it by force, it came from anti-imperialist movements adopting it pragmatically after America chose to back the European imperial powers after WW2 for some reason.
That is not a great reading of history, particularly concerning Eastern Europe following WWII.
Also it's pretty funny because of how much pressure the US put on the imperial powers it "backed" to give up their holdings.
The anti-interventionist take against the US facing down global communism is one I'm used to arguing with leftists about. Good job taking a new line.
FtSoA
1mo ago
As the Samuelson quote I cited in another comment makes clear, Einstein had a pie-in-the-sky moronic view of how economies worked.
He was already anti-Soviet, so he knew that wasn't going well.
Further, Einstein took an explicitly anti-intellectual approach to the question. He was dumbing things down even though he obviously could have grasped the theory and math had he chosen to.
The fact that economics was not even his field is a pretty fucking good argument that he shouldn't have lent his prestige to such a moronic pursuit via that essay.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Einstein wrote his famous essay in 1949.
Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom in 1944. He identified the knowledge problem, which devastates any ideas about central planning, in 1936.
Samuelson wrote Foundations of Economic Analysis in 1946 and Economics in 1948.
Mises wrote Socialism in 1922.
Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776.
In the essay, Einstein reveals he does not understand basic economic principles and simply tries to discredit the entire field as insufficiently scientific. He also talks about human nature, and goes on to reveal he doesn't understand it very well. He was, to his credit, not a fan of the Soviets.
I'm being a wee bit uncharitable, because the most influential living economist of the time was probably Samuelson, and he used a bunch of math to justify some version of socialism. (He was still defending the growth of the Soviet economy in 1989...) But Einstein didn't even try to justify his delusions with the math of blackboard economics.
Actually, by total coincidence I just found a quote from Samuelson shitting on Einstein being as delusional about economics as Chomsky.
FtSoA
1mo ago
That's a good way to put it.
More degrees of freedom to really get into complex ways to fuck things up.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Not winning a major war or increasing average human intelligence, that's for damn sure.
FtSoA
1mo ago
That was not gonna keep Soviet tanks from crushing all that they could.
Or Chinese.
Sorry, the USSR managed to industrialize and become a major military power despite the dysfunctional system.
FFS, just look at what a shithole North Korea is. Guess what though? They have a massive military and even nukes.
FtSoA
1mo ago
The Islamic regime has crowd control down to a science. They get lots of practice.
There are a lot of levels before they start killing people. These protests took quite sometime before things started getting violent and they turned telecommunications off.
You have to consider that in the West the typical protestor does not want to violently overthrow the whole system of government.
Even during the height of the Civil Rights movement or BLM, the typical protestor knows that unless they pick a fight directly with law enforcement there won't be violence. Hell, Kent State is a major piece of lore, and it was a tiny instance of violence.
So it's not necessarily about "rich" or "poor." It's more about the population, sentiment towards the government, and willingness for either side to use violence.
FtSoA
1mo ago
I trust Scott to wrangle the outcomes of his own genetics more than I do any onlookers with partial information.
His little boy is a hell of a character, but there's nothing in those anecdotes he shared that strike me as an actual problem. Keep in mind Scott does baby duty at set times, and for much of the day he has outside assistance. He can afford to be a bit indulging without losing his mind for the time he has the watch.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Problem with this argument is that Israel was blasting away at Iran's launchers pretty well. They were conducting bombing missions when Trump demanded Israel stop pummeling Iran.
The obvious answer from the timing is that Trump judged bombing Fordow "mission accomplished" and so he gave in to the Vance wing of the administration to stop warmongering. Plus he does want that Nobel Prize.
Israel and Iran via Russia reportedly agreed to not attack each other, before these protests started, but while Israel wanted to blast Hezbollah some more. So what do you think the expiration date on that will be? Pretty soon I bet.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Boy, I don't know how much time you spend around not smart people, but I promise you it's all worse on average.
I think you have to take a wildly uncharitable interpretation of what Scott wrote to think he's therefore bad at child rearing.
Would I personally indulge my toddler quite so much? No, but it sure was funny to read about. My little girl isn't quite so ridiculous, yet.
I think there are certain brain worms that target a certain level of intelligence, but it's not like it gets worse as you get to super geniuses relative to say 115.
Bertrand Russell was a pacifist and Albert Einstein endorsed socialism explicitly. These are views I consider immensely retarded due to overwhelming theoretical and empirical evidence against them. Motivated reasoning effects everyone, and smart people perhaps find more territory to get lost in than a more average person.
But overall there's basically no known tradeoffs with higher intelligence. There are not a set number of character points. Life isn't fair.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Man, imagine if the Nazis actually had a categorization scheme by race that informed their views on eugenics.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Would be awkward for everyone if IQ positively correlates with other positive traits not immediately connected to taking tests.
Brain do work gooder faster, affect many thing.
FtSoA
1mo ago
The irony there is that the vast majority of Jews who were exterminated were not the integrated, typically pretty secular, educated urban elites.
It was the rural devout Jews. They had neither the means to flee or escape easy detection.
We can’t help but watch and follow along, but 90% of the time it seems like it’s a Jew that created it. My gut says they were also doing things like creating onlyfans back then.
Now do Nobel Prizes.
Jews aren't magically pathological for a society. That's just brain worms.
For instance, lots of prominent leftist/communist thinkers were Jews. But so were Hayek and Friedman, among others.
FtSoA
1mo ago
I'm not advocating for anything other than not exterminating a particular segment of the population having certain talents.
Height is a funny one because of just how tall many European countries are now without any specific program.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Well I too lived through this era. I even lived in Iraq and Afghanistan for a spell.
I think you're granting a lot of explanatory power to the GWOT that it does not deserve whatsoever.
Trump as a singular individual and a Great Man of history is a major variable for sure. His critique of the GWOT was relevant to his popularity and MAGA, but it hasn't exactly informed his foreign policy decisions, as I already noted. He's clearly no isolationist.
But did the GWOT have much to do with immigration, the single biggest issue for Trump? (No, not it did not.)
The Great Awokening, for another significant factor, is not exactly closely tied to foreign policy at all.
The constitutional issues we have about domestic issues, like the expansion of the commerce clause, long precede the GWOT and have nothing to do with foreign policy. FDR and the Warren court have a lot of explanatory power here, not the GWOT.
In general, US domestic politics are pretty separate from foreign policy. Most voters list it pretty far down as their concerns go.
As we have previously discussed, Libya also did not involve an invasion and occupation.
Iran is not Libya and Iranians are not Libyans, so that's a major set of differences.
You appear to be assuming that the general population of Iran is some sort of generic huddled mass, yearning to breath free, that the problem is just the Mullahs and if we sweep the mullahs out of the way Iran magically transforms into Michigan.
The comparison I've used multiple times is actually an oil-rich Turkey. Maybe try that comparison and see how it feels.
Your confidence that an intervention likely leads to a better situation for all involved is contradicted by recent experience, which you are dismissing out of hand.
A critical skill in life is evaluating appropriate analogies, not inappropriate ones. The intervention in Libya is at least in the right ballpark. (For example, someone else unironically brought up bombing in WWII for fuck's sake in evaluating the potential efficacy of a precision bombing campaign today.)
I note that the US and Israel "dominated a second-tier power" less than a year ago, and yet here you are, demanding we bomb them again. Did we not dominate them hard enough last time? If so, why are you claiming that this current domination will succeed where the previous domination failed?
Last time, Trump went from tweeting about regime change to suddenly demanding a cessation of hostilities after merely 12 days. Don't confuse intensity of domination with the time length of domination. Had the Israeli air campaign continued, they were on track to hit certain key economic facilities in retaliation for Iranian targeting of Israeli domestic infrastructure. We would have at some point almost certainly seen civil unrest caused by economic deterioration months ago.
Last time we dominated them hard enough to put a major dent in their missile and nuclear programs, but did not aim at devastating domestic security forces and economic capacities. There was no active domestic opposition on the ground. As the months passed, Iran's economy deteriorated further without having lost major oil or commercial capacities to the IAF, and now there is major domestic opposition.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Were they not quite willing to do it themselves last June and Trump told them to stop?
FtSoA
1mo ago
IMHO the average American is blind to the utter bloodlust that many Zionist donors have against Iran,
Ah poor Iran, hated by the Jews for no justifiable reason.
They would be fine starving the Iranian people just like they were fine starving children in Gaza.
Are we still going with that myth?
FtSoA
1mo ago
One problem with the Nazis is that they were very, very, very bad with eugenics.
Like about as backwards in their biggest focus as you can be. Total unforced error, and extremely ironic given the manpower of the Manhattan Project.
You kinda skipped that detail.
FtSoA
1mo ago
I don't know enough about the particulars of how America's journey into the trenches really made a difference to how the war ended, vs. solely material support. Any change would probably make it so we don't get a Hitler and the particulars of the Nazis, but that's kind of unfair because he was such a strange duck out of nowhere. On the other hand, a militant Germany in general was still possible, just as a baseline. You can imagine some other type of fascism coming to power, but being more focused on the threat of communism than invading Western Europe. I mean just a slightly more sane and less ambitious Hitler could have done some of his opening moves that barely got push back, and then actually have defeated the commies if he so chose. Just leave Poland alone ffs.
The commies in contrast, seem like they were destined to control Russia regardless of any one figure and embark on global revolution.
But I'm not asking that we model off WWII history.
I'm asking that we model off the Cold War and post-Cold War, and that we use our hard and soft power wisely. Occupations and nation building are not wise without a suitable opportunity and a full commitment. Iraq and Afghanistan were not it. Vietnam was not it. Korea could have gone a lot better if we had been smarter about triggering Chinese intervention. Light footprint, use our air power. For instance, it was smart the way we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait; we played to our strengths. Reasonable people can disagree how smart it was then not to remove him from power, but it was--leaving aside entirely the failures of the occupation--not great geopolitics in 2003 to remove him at a point he was a minor threat to us and a major threat to Iran. Especially because we had already the Afghanistan shindig going.
Presently, for the second time in ~seven months, we're getting handed to us on a platter a chance to remove a longstanding enemy regime. It's an easy call.
Actually, our present military with it's current technology can perform feats that we only dreamt of in past decades. It's not about scale; it's about precision and speed. Our only actual rival is China, and they have significant problems of their own that at least rival ours. We should play to our strengths and exploit our rivals' weaknesses.
FtSoA
1mo ago
Many in the Islamic world can and do argue that the Islamic regime is "special" too though.
In this case, it's not a hard call that the Iranian populace is very upset. They ought to be. Their money is worthless and they're running out of water even if you take anything to do with Islam out of the picture. They are ruled by despotic retards and they know it. They know all that money spent on arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC was basically totally wasted against Israel's total dominance of them.
FtSoA
1mo ago
The GWOT destroyed the Republican party as an institution, and arguably destroyed America as a nation.
Good lord no it didn't. If anything, since it became a bipartisan thing to criticize it ought to be a unifying factor, right? Plus, it's pretty ironic Trump was a major GOP critic early on and now he's the one doing some foreign policy interventions after making Marco Rubio his SecState right?
But also, intervening in Iran doesn't have to involve an invasion and occupation. That is learning.
We just saw our and Israel's military fucking dominate a second-tier power and you're questioning whether we can simply bomb that power again? Get a grip man.
He's legitimately interested in what's doing what is best for the American people insofar as he and his also make a buck.
He's got a mafioso approach towards politics and economics. "What's in it for me?" "Are you loyal above all else?" He automatically respects other leaders with the same instincts. That's why he's got an authoritarian streak, but he's not actually a tyrant. He can be extremely forgiving, if one bends the knee to his satisfaction.
Politicians as a class of human beings are pretty obviously suffering from high rates of narcissism, even if you think a lot of it is subclinical.
Trump and his obsession with e.g. the Nobel Prize, throwing his name/image on all kinds of governmental things, or election results (he always wins by a landslide in his head) make it pretty clearly clinical. He's a standout among politicians for narcissism. A true generational talent.
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