HaroldWilson
9mo ago
This just seems a classic case of export finance? As part of the agreement, the article you link in the post states, Siemens will be doing a lot of work on the project, which explains everything. Most governments do this quite a lot as an inexpensive way of boosting exports and fostering good relations abroad - India does it too! Total nothingburger.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Why would anyone normal care about other people’s genitalia or a war in a country they can’t find on a map and only became independent in 1992? Why am I, a relative nobody, worried about policing? And my suspicion is that the average person, because of the vote, is often forced to pretend to care, is policed for the ways they pretend to care, when they’d much rather spend time on kids’ education and sports, their jobs, their family, and whatever hobbies they choose to enjoy. I think almost everyone would actually be happier to never worry about cultural affairs ever again.
If this is true, why did the lack of representation for the working classes occasion such dissatisfaction in, say, nineteenth century Britain? The failure of what would become the First Reform Act in 1832 brought Britain if not actually to the brink of revolution then certainly to an acute crisis, over a bill that only expanded the franchise a little. The meeting of the BPU in that crisis supposedly brought out 200,000 people, an astonishing figure considering that it exceeded the entire population of Birmingham. These were people with far less time and energy to devote to political causes than most of today's people, yet they did so anyway, because they knew how important representation was.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
This seems like a pretty ahistorical theory. To take just one example, indigenous Amerindians were, a lot of the time, pretty unhappy about Spanish rule throughout their presence, and they did resist, but in more passive ways that we don't remember because they aren't as exciting as open rebellion (though that did happen as well). They were certainly not friends of colonial administrators, indeed they did practically everything they could to stop themselves being administered effectively, deceiving them about where people lived, how many there were in particular places, refused to comply with requirements of forced labour, resisted Christianisation, etc. etc.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Because most of the literature points in the direction that a high chance of being caught and effective is by far the most important factor in determining deterrence rather than severity of punishment. Criminals are not paragons of rationality, breaking out their calculator to work out the expected returns before committing the offence. Quick and reliable punishment creates a much stronger link between offence and punishment in the mind than the occasional criminal being caught and spending years in the slammer. Which it to say that you cannot simply assume that in practice deterrence is sentence length x chance of conviction.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Despite my fallouts with The Left, I'm still broadly a social democrat
I don't think your views on crime, though I personally wouldn't subscribe to all of them, are at all in tension with social democracy, indeed if one considers policing to be a public service which it surely is, then ample police funding is surely the 'more' social democratic perspective. Hence why in Britain, where policing has not been caught up in culture wars as it has in the US, even Corbyn attacked the Tories for cutting police funding.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
The blue tribe has been importing a new electorate hand over fist for decades
And by importing, you mean advocating fewer restrictions. Isn't it just possible that people support immigration because they think it's good for a range of economic or moral reasons, not for some nefarious reasons regarding the partisanship of immigrants. I do, at least.
The media memeplex blares out left-propaganda 24/7 in an effort to manufacture consent
This is just silly. Not only does media coverage mostly just respond to demand - at the end of the day even MSNBC just want viewers, that's what they exist for - cable news is not the entirety of media in America. Local news and most print media (with a few notable exceptions), especially tabloids, don't 'blare of left-propaganda' at all.
Lawmakers just change the rules whenever they feel their hegemony slipping (e.g. Covid mail voting)
Sure, that's why famously liberal Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia, Indiana, Arkansas, Alaska and Missouri also expanded mail voting during Covid.
It doesn't matter whether the Reps or Dems win anyway because the politicians of both parties come from the same class stratum and are pursuing UniParty agreed goals anyway
Probably not the place for this discussion but consider that 'uniparty agreed goals' may exist because of genuine overlap in the preferences of both sections of the electorate, not some conspiracy.
And even if they weren't, the example of Trump proves that even if an outsider were to win, they'd just get stymied by the Deep State
Again, probably for another time, but I'd just ask on what specific issues wholly within the President's power Trump was stymied on.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I think there's also, as usual, a case of diminishing returns here. If you're inactive, and you start exercising regularly and eating healthily, I don't doubt that's good for mental health (as well as physical health obviously). But once you pass the point of 'reasonably fit and healthy' I find it hard to believe gym-going is does anything more for you mentally than any other hobby.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
mostly old people died now so low QALY losses compared to say, Spanish flu
He literally talks about this in the post.
I'm pre-registering a very optimistic prediction. If it was meant to really be act of war/do damage, why was the attack telegraphed in advance? Also, per Fars, only targets identified by government sources so far are bases in the Golan Heights and one in the Negev desert. This matches the pattern of the symbolic post-Soleimani response - remember when people start talking about ballistic missiles that those were used then too. Am I wish-casting? Yes, probably, but I do genuinely think this is probably not going to be disastrous.
Edit: just seen this tweet from the Iranian mission to the UN saying that 'the matter can be deemed concluded'. Thank god, though the danger not passed if some of the missiles/drones do get through and do some real damage.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Now what was that verse by somebody or other?
Well, two can play at that game.
Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night - she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - "Is this all?"
A woman today who has no goal, no purpose, no ambition patterning her days into the future, making her stretch and grow beyond that small score of years in which her body can fill its biological function, is committing a kind of suicide. The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive. There is no way for these women to break out of their comfortable concentration camps except by finally putting forth an effort - that human effort which reaches beyond biology, beyond the narrow walls of the home, to help shape the future
It's easy to portray a working life as drab and meaningless, but one can equally do so for the non-working mother. FWIW I think both are oversimple and overgeneralised.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Are you familiar with Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism?
“The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter looking”
This, along with related comments in the post above, is just so lazy and trite. For one, the actual evidence for this is quite limited; people sometimes cite one study from 2017, which mostly takes election results from the 1970s and so seems of limited usefulness for today. Other than that there doesn't seem to be much. As a wise man once said, if you cannot measure it your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
In any case, the whole line of argument is just absurdly uncharitable. Republicans are much more likely to be obese than Democrats, but if I said something like 'Republicans only dislike public transit spending because they are fat fucks who can't arsed to walk from the bus stop' I would rightly be dismissed as an annoying twerp, which I am afraid is very much how you come across.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
So, there's two key points here.
Partygate was by far the most important thing that happened to get Boris removed. But general 'sleaze' in the party didn't help, especially the way it was handled. Look up the Owen Paterson case in particular.
More critically however, the Tories faced some awful defeats. By-elections in seats which had formerly been ultra-safe True-Blue constituencies were electing Liberal Democrats, and Wakefield, a former Labour seat (though not by enormous margins) that went to the Conservatives, returned to Labour in fairly spectacular style, the margin being a crushing 17%, not far off the 2001 figure. Boris' personal figures were through the floor, and voting intention polling, though better, wasn't great either.
HaroldWilson
3mo ago
If you want to raise revenue
In the world of the modern scale of government the revenue raised by tariffs is pretty meagre in comparison to the scale of the economic disruption. Even Iran, which is one of the most protectionist nations in the world, receives something like 5% of total revenues from tariffs.
HaroldWilson
3mo ago
On this basis literally anything Trump does can be explained as a brilliant negotiating tactic. If your aim is just to induce lower tariffs from foreign nations, why not actually base your tariffs on the real rates of other nations and not this balance of trade nonsense? There are plenty of countries with lower average tariff rates than the US who have nevertheless been hit - what precisely is Trump trying to achieve there if his aim is reciprocal reductions?
HaroldWilson
4mo ago
not running an uncalled for and unbecoming smear campaign against Romney
I think this is a little silly. Without wishing to start the endless and pointless 'who started it' conversations, the idea that the Romney 'smear' campaign was some turning point in the breakdown of partisan relations is I think not very likely. After all Republicans ran their own set of vituperative ads in the 2012, including 'small business owners' getting faux-outraged at the stupid 'you didn't build that' (mis-)quotation and that work/welfare ad making a bare-faced lie about welfare reform. At least Bain actually did close that factory in that Obama ad.
I don't think there was ever a realistic off-ramp from where America is now, but it isn't that bad, all things considered. At least Senators don't beat each other near to death these days. Trump is pretty unique and when he sees out his term of dies I think the populist right probably loses its momentum and things start to cool down again, especially when it becomes apparent that all he will have achieved is some tax cuts which outweigh by a factor of a zillion any savings from cutting 'bureaucracy'.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
you can't expect the West to be able to defeat Russia in every proxy war context.
This isn't even a symmetrical proxy war. The West is fighting only as a proxy against full Russian involvement. Feels a lot like Russia's Vietnam, even if in the long run Russia might eke out a points victory - a major power thwarted by a minor nation backed by opposing major powers, except even less flattering for Russia because at least Vietnam was half a world away and not bordering America.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
We have survived most of history without them
Well sort of, but not very well. Peel didn't create the Metropolitan Police just because he felt like it, law and order in the early 19th century and before was a disaster, precisely because so much of the burden was placed on private citizens to bring cases etc. and they weren't very good at it. Violent crime in inner London dropped by as much as 40% on the introduction of the Met, with smaller reductions for property crime.
We also survived most of history without modern medicine.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
The bureaucrats nearly always win
FWIW, I don't think this necessarily gives a completely accurate impression of the show; especially as the series go on, Hacker gets his way quite a lot; just off the top of my head, he gets one over Humphrey on defending St George's island, the national database, moving soldiers to the North, Humphrey testifying about the bugging in one of the last episodes, the phone tapping petition (in the death list episode), over that bureaucracy/waste/select committee thing, the Buranda speech/oil loan, and moreover in many episodes they are working to the same ends. The Channel Tunnel, the threatened abolition of the department etc.
So, at some points in the series, it almost approaches an even contest. And iirc, Humphrey and other senior civil servants do now and again admit that if a minister, or maybe just the Prime Minister, is really dead set on something they often can't stop it. Plus, Hacker seems to be a less competent minister than the average
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
The PM is a party man the public did not vote for
Welcome to the Westminster system. The public did not vote for him, but they voted in the MPs that chose him as leader. A slight degree of removal but every action he wants to take (at least in the realm of primary legislation) must be voted upon by the people's elected representatives and those representatives could remove him and his government at any time should they wish to.
people are routinely arrested for disagreeing with government ideology.
Like with @Lizzardspawn before I respond to this I'll ask you a question; is it your genuine belief that the Chinese state does not restrict freedom of speech to any considerably greater degree than the British state?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Surely whatever you think about the UK, any plausible faults are on a completely different plane to those of the Chinese state, especially if the complaints you're levying are the aforementioned ones about affirmative action or whatever. Most importantly of all of course is the total absence of any genuine democracy or appreciable freedom of the press in China. Certainly to the extent that assisting China militarily because you were hacked off at a diversity initiative is indefensible.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I think most people would look at that picture and be surprised to be told that these people are committing a genocide
Would they? Especially given that SS members were presumably self-selected to be ideologically committed Nazis, it doesn't seem at all implausible that many were sufficiently untroubled by genocide as to partake in jollity in their spare time. After all, depending on when these photos were taken, they might also not look like people staring down the barrel of total defeat in the war.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
People are wasting 5-15 years of their lives on a very expensive vacation, at best, when they could be having kids. We want them to make that important decision early, and nothing sobers a young man quicker than staring decades of drudgery in the face.
I mean, you can call it a 'vacation' if you really want to, but the market has spoken, and it has said that the better educated command much better salaries.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I don't think that the current low crime levels of many East Asian cities can be put down to some kind of long-running national culture, much less to 'biological heredity'. Late imperial China was quite a violent place; for just one example, the problem of laoguazei murdering and robbing travellers was thought to be endemic. An assessment of actual figures is obviously impossible to arrive at, guides on travelling published in the 18th century, for instance, often included warnings such as this;
[Rule no. 6]: When traveling, you must choose the right companion,
which might be helpful at times. If encountering someone unknown,
even if riding on the same boat or sleeping at the same inn, it is possible
that he has a different agenda from yours. All sorts of valuables should
be kept secret and guarded attentively. At night, be wary of theft. In
daytime, be wary of robbery.
[Rule no. 7]: No matter whether traveling via water or land, always
wait until the eastern sky turns bright before setting sail or leaving the
inn. If the eastern sky is still dim without any sign of sunrise, even if
a rooster has crowed, it is still nighttime. If one hurries to unleash the
boat or set off down the road, one must be wary of the danger of being
robbed by evildoers. When the sun starts to set in the west, one should
park the boat or find an inn. As the idiom goes, rest early instead of
late, better to be delayed than to be wronged
Likewise, William T. Rowe's study of Hankow in the late Qing period found that, while again we can't assess things quantitively, the public perception was the criminals were everywhere and that they were effectively free to commit crime as they pleased, and there were certainly 'bad' parts of the city where the more respectable citizen would not wish to find himself. As one newspaper observed in the mid-19th century, 'bandit-types from all over China find it easy to engage in violent crimes... the bad freely intermingle with the good'.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
The central problem with your argument is that you are ignoring the vastly different history of all these groups and the flattening the different circumstances of each by saying they were all discriminated against. Of course, you do address the point that each group are/were disadvantaged to a similar extent, but it isn't really that simple. Of course, Asian and Jewish Americans did/do face significant discrimination. However, for instance, in the case of Asian Americans the circumstances of their arrival have had the effect of counteracting disadvantage based on race faced on an institutional or inter-personal level. Asian Americans are almost all here as or as descendants of economic migrants, which selects for the most educated and grafting. Consider this; in the period immediately following 1965, Asian immigrants (excl. Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) had an average 15.2 years of schooling, which makes plenty of sense - it was not your average Indian or Japanese that immigrated to America in the 1960s and 1970s, or even today, especially in the case of poorer countries. This far exceeded the average native level, which as late of 1980 was only 13.07. This represents an enormous advantage in terms of ensuring the kind of beneficial which, as you, Asian-Americans disproportionately enjoy. So of course Asian immigrants should do better than average.
The circumstances of the arrival of African-Americans are plainly vastly different. Hence why recent Nigerian immigrants and their children actually out-earn the American average. Looking at such a vast disparity between recent black immigrants and the descendants of slaves, what else can explain that gap except the circumstances of the arrival of the slaves and their subsequent treatment, first as slaves and then as free but disadvantaged citizens?
What the fuck you invested in? Year end 2017 S&P 500 was below 2,700, the low point in 2022 was over 3,500.
Until Trump climbed down today the slide was showing no signs of stopping whatsoever. We're barely more than a week removed from the original announcement.
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