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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The weird pension fund insurance stuff was one of those classic things that nobody thinks will go wrong until it does (as I understand it, and I don’t, it was effectively a kind of leveraged insurance product designed not to improve returns but to stabilize them over decades, because obviously pension funds have to disburse funds when times are bad as well as good). Pension funds got margin called, and therefore had to suddenly sell long-dated gilts which crashed the market because there were fewer buyers than every pension fund unloading them simultaneously, so the BoE was forced to step in to stabilize the market. I don’t think it realistically counts as a full resumption of QE but obviously it is a hilarious setback.




The short version of what happened to the pension funds is:


    

  • 

    Pension funds have future-dated liabilities. Falling interest rates raise the NPV of these liabilities, potentially causing the pension fund to become accounting-insolvent.
    

    • 

  • 

    UK regulation makes it a bad idea to allow a pension fund to be accounting-insolvent, so pension funds want to manage this risk. The main way they do this is using long-dated interest rate swaps. Effectively this is a side bet on interest rates - if interest rates fall, you win enough on the swap to cover the increased liability.
    

    • 

  • 

    Market interest rates rose, fast. This meant that pension funds lost money on the swaps, and faced margin calls which needed to be paid in cash in the very short term (days, not weeks). But the offsetting gain from a falling NPV of liabilities is a purely paper gain. So pension funds were in danger of becoming cash-insolvent.
    

    • 

  • 

    In addition, rising interest rates reduce the value of long-dated government bonds, which are a popular form of collateral. The 50-year gilt was briefly trading at 40p in the £ (not because anyone was afraid of a default, just because the interest rate suddenly became below-market). If you were using this gilt as collateral, you would be facing a margin call even if you hadn't lost money.
    

    • 



Whatever you call it, the BoE was forced to print money to cover government (planned) deficits that the bond market couldn't bear. This is bad.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At a very high level, the sterling/gilt crash is mostly driven by what finance Twitter is now calling MRP (short for Moron Risk Premium). The UK Deep State has a reputation for basic competence (Dominic Cummings thinks this is undeserved, but most investors disagree with him), whereas the clique of right-wing Brexit-supporting Tories that put Truss into power has a reputation for badly botching the technical aspects of Brexit. So when the Truss ministry publicly blows off the Deep State while simultaneously embarking on a questionable economic policy, investors worry that the British government is no longer going to display basic competence. It doesn't help that bankers can see the UK regulators visibly struggling to cope with onshoring financial regulation post-Brexit, which also creates a stench of Brexity incompetence. (This isn't actually a competence issue, it is a workload issue. The UK needs more bureaucrats as a fully sovereign state than it did as an EU member, but it is politically unacceptable to hire them).


When the government doubles down by saying the crisis is everywhere and not just the UK, blaming the remoaner IMF, attacking bond markets as woke etc. this obviously makes things worse.


At a semi-technical level, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/whos-afraid-of-fiscal-dominance/ is a good essay explaining to laymen what the scenario is that investors dumping the pound are worrying about.


I will do a separate post on the gilt market problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The big problem with the 45% tax cut is that it makes it politically impossible to cut spending (certainly, investors think it does, which is what is moving markets). If Kwarteng had announced only the corporate and middle class tax cuts while promising to find offsetting spending cuts in the next couple of months, he might have been believed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We may differ in our understanding of the term. For me, Deep State is unelected self-governed bureaucracy that steers the state policy in accordance with its own values, insular culture and long-term vision; basically a self-perpetuating fraternity entrenched in the official power structure, and it takes a whole ecology of think tanks, and decades of stability and obscurity for this fraternity to mature. You seem to believe it's some concrete institutional factor, like intelligence services. This is as queer to me as Marxist materialist analysis that explains all political processes in terms of economic relations. Spooks run Russia, maybe Israel to some extent, but in all other countries they're not the decision-making caste.




The Deep State is a social network which has penetrated the permanent government sufficiently deeply that it can manipulate the elected government into doing what it wants. In other words, the Deep State is Georgetown and Manhattan cocktail parties and the CFR matters because it is run by people who are invited to those cocktail parties, not the other way round. Germany is run by industrialists so the German deep state prefer to speak through the IFO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifo_Institute_for_Economic_Research).


When I worked at Deutsche Bank, there was an occasional hint of the German Deep State in action. It is real, but it is narrowly mercenary in outlook and doesn't waste time thinking about national security. FWIW, the German Deep State is more closely tied to the Gnomes of Zurich than the US Deep State, but in an age where all Rhodes (scholarships) lead to Davos, this probably doesn't matter.


The French Deep State, incidentally, is also real, and is able to act independently of the US. From a Moldbuggian perspective, this is because Harvard does not control the ENA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sufism is also a big deal in Turkey - it was heavily sponsored by the Ottoman empire. I don't know how much of a counterforce to Erdoganism it is.


Re. "Reformation", thing to remember is that "Wahabbism" (Salafism in the Arab world and Deoband in the Indian sub-continent) is a Reformation in Islam. Both movements are based on throwing away the cruft of 1000 years of tradition and returning to a simpler Scripture-based religion. Both are tied to the spread of mass literacy in the cultures they spread in. Both are tied to a decadence-critique of a failing empire that was legitimised by the old religion (HRE/Ottoman/Mughal) and received support from secular forces seeking independence from the decadent empire (or its British successor in the case of Deoband). And both led to large increases in religious persecution and associated political violence - the Christian world starts moving slowly towards freedom of religion after it is utterly exhausted by the 30 years' war (adjusting for population growth, worse than WW2) and doesn't get there until the 19th century.


What we need to make Islam a religion we can do business with is an Islamic Enlightenment, not a Reformation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Presidency would be interesting. The Electoral College has an absolute majority requirement, with the alternative being a contingent election in the House. Since the House votes by states and not by member, this would leave the outcome more or less entirely divorced from the national popular vote. Believe it or not, this is how the Framers originally saw Presidential elections going most of the time, with the EC failing to find a majority and the election being forced to the House, except when a 'man of national renown' (read, at the time of the Philadelphia Convention: Washington) had the charisma, fame, and respect to garner an outright EC majority. Partisan politics ensured this never happened but, if you moved to more than two parties, it would become more common, I think.




I think a lot of the wierdness of the US Constitution is explained by the fact that the Framers knew that Washington would be effectively unopposed as the first President, and assumed that he would be de facto President for life rather than stepping down after two terms.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In a Westminster system where voters are used to the existence of more than two parties, a plurality party can only win a majority of seats with <40% of the popular vote if voters don't hate them enough to vote tactically against them. In 2005 and mostly in 2010 it was taken for granted by intelligent left-wing voters that you don't vote Labour in a Con-LD marginal and you don't vote Lib Dem in a Con-Lab marginal. By 2015, the left hated the Lib Dems more than they hated the Tories and voted accordingly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I assume the rules are different for Secret vs. Top Secret clearances. Googling suggests that a foreign spouse who is in regular contact with their foreign birth family is disqualifying for TS.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
POC, BIPOC, BAME, and all other euphemistic portmanteau terms the lump together non-white people in white-majority countries. They obscure more than they illuminate and the people the words refer to don't like them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					




... pointedly doesn't lump together all the non-white people. 'Black and Indigenous People of Color' (where 'indigenous' can be taken to include people with a substantial Native American ancestry component, thus sweeping up most Latinos who aren't Conquistador-Americans) excludes Asians of both the South Asian and the East Asian persuasion. It's implicitly a catch-all term for 'non-white people who have worse average social outcomes than white people', a PC alternative for what used to be called 'non-Asian minorities'.


My understanding (I am not American, and BIPOC is obviously meaningless outside North America) confirmed by a quick Google is that BIPOC is supposed to stand for "Black, Indigenous, *and *People of Colour" - i.e. it does lump together all non-whites, but centres Black Americans and American Indians within the lump.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


These threads tend to be risk assessments, with some people thinking there is a serious risk of nuclear exchange, and some people seeming to discount that risk.






I'm curious about what kind of risk assessment people typically engage in.




I am also a professional risk manager, and trying to model what people are thinking, I think the big difference is not in our assessment of the existential risk from Russia going nuclear. It is in our assessment of the potential risk from conceding to Russian nuclear blackmail.


Given that Russia has chosen to wage a war of unprovoked aggression under the umbrella of nuclear blackmail, the civilised world has two fundamental options (I am deliberately oversimplifying here):


    

  1. 

    Call Russia's bluff by credibly threatening serious consequences if Russia tries to use nuclear weapons to win the war in Ukraine. This creates the existential risk that Russia is not in fact bluffing, that Russia treats the serious consequences as nuclear escalation leading to armageddon.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Fold, and tell Russia (and China and any other future barbarian nuclear powers) that they can use nuclear blackmail to get whatever they want (up to and including NATO's blessing to reinvade other countries they have just been driven out of after launching an unprovoked war of aggression and losing conventionally). As well as the immediate cost to Ukraine and Ukrainians, this aggravates two existential risks:
    

    3. 



a) Loss of credibility Neville Chamberlain style leading to an increased risk of nuclear armageddon due to a future miscalculation.


b) Massive nuclear proliferation in a world where the ground rules no longer include "nuclear states do not invade their non-nuclear neighbours under the umbrella of nuclear blackmail" the way they did in the Cold War (remember that Truman sacked MacArthur for threatening nuclear escalation against North Korea). If Russia gets enough of Ukraine (and the four provinces they have just purported to annex counts) then acquiring nukes yesterday is a matter of basic survival for countries like Poland and Vietnam (and arguably Iran and Saudi Arabia). And if every medium sized country has nukes then the armageddon risks of both a Cuban Missile Crisis and a Stanislav Petrov event increase by orders of magnitude.


As far as I can see, we all agree that risk 1 is a low-probability high-impact risk we would prefer not to take. Some of us thing risk 2 is low-probability low-impact because Russia should make only reasonable demands on Ukraine and then go home. Others (including me) think that risk 2 is a high-probability high-impact risk because massive nuclear proliferation is a racing certainty if nuclear blackmail works. And some people seem to think that there is a low-probability high-impact risk that Russia is going to drive straight to the Rhine once we tell them that we won't resist if they say nuclear boo.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I said end up dead or unpleasantly imprisoned, which is what that backlash generally consists in. I doubt anywhere would take Putin as a non-criminal exile were he deposed.




There is a long history of finding small pro-Western countries to offer asylum to dictators the West wants to encourage to retire. Most obviously, the Gulf sheikdoms will admit billionaires no questions asked as long as they keep the vodka and bacon discreet.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And of course NATO can change the personal risk assessments of a Russian missile silo operator by our public messaging about the consequences of nuclear escalation.


Putin's family might survive in a nuclear bunker. But the guy who actually pulls the trigger - he is looking at the picture of his wife and kids on the shelf and thinking "So, punk. Do you feel lucky?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the UK "indigenous" to refer to the white English population is considered to be a racist dog-whistle. Amusingly, there is a deep (as in going back to the 1380's, and still taken seriously as late as the 1980's) tradition of (pre-Wokespeak so it doesn't use the technical terms, but the sentiment is clear) left-wing historical mythology in England which sees the white working class as indigenous and the upper class as settler-colonialists descended from William the Conqueror's knights.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Who would say no to a slice of Poland?




Rather famously, the British in 1939. And angry Brits can express this quite vigorously at time - roughly what you would expect from a soccer riot commanded by Sandhurst-trained officers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This hilarious Noahopinion essay says that modern Tankies are about 2000 people on Twitter who get more attention than they deserve because they are so good at trolling other prominent left-Twitter factions.


I don't know about the 2000 Twitter trolls theory, but I agree with Noah that the root cause is anti-Americanism taken to the level where the enemy of my enemy is my friend.


I think the same applies to the increasingly numerous "right-Tankies" (such as the one who took over the CPAC twitter account), who see the American government and American-led alliance system as part of the woke enemy. I am not sure what you call right-wingers who express Tankie-like sentiments - Quisling seems unfairly harsh, although this really is the kind of sentiment that enabled people like Quisling and Petain in WW2.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a Christian conservative in mid-20th century Europe, who is more likely to undermine the godliness of my country and the traditions of my people, Hitler, Mussolini, or the local Social Democrats and their friends in Moscow? Why would I feel loyalty to the same people who push secular education and republicanism, want to deconstruct my culture, and openly push rootless cosmopolitanism (and rootless cosmopolitanism) into my country while making nice to the people who killed millions in the Ukrainian genocides? I am not a traitor when I support Hitler since the group I would supposedly be betraying are people who want to behead my King and eject my God from the schools.


Vidkung Quisling is signing off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
TheMotte may or may not ban slurs explicitly, but the sort of person who would use a slur to insult another poster tends to catch a ban for other reasons pretty quickly.  There is a minimum IQ threshold to understand why writing this sentence (complete with r-word) is less bad than calling out the retards who use spaces instead of tabs to their faces. The nice thing about this place is that 100% of the regulars meet it.


Disclaimer: I don't insist on tabs, but my employer does, and I am smart enough not to argue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So it is not any more unusual for a black mom to give birth to a white child than it is for a white brunette to give birth to a ginger child.




Gingerness is caused by a single recessive gene which (in double dose) causes the production of pheomelanin instead of eumelanin, so it is as genetically significant as skin colour. The gene is associated with specific white ethnicities (Scots, Irish, Udmurts) and seeing it in someone not from those ethnicities is unusual. So it is not normal for a white brunette to give birth to a ginger child unless both her and her male partner have ancestry from one of those ethnicities.


When my wife gave birth to a ginger IVF baby (I have Irish ancestry, she thought she didn't) we had a DNA test done. The testing company was most confused as to why we were asking for a maternity test and mostly unconcerned about paternity. After discovering that the clinic hadn't made a mix-up, one of my wife's relatives admitted that an Irishman might have been involved somewhere in her family tree.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I wonder how much the increase in diabetes is due to increased diagnosis such as borderline diabetes cases that would have been ignored 20 years ago.




There is no such thing as borderline type 1, and symptomatic type 1 diabetes is very easy to diagnose (and kills you within months if you ignore it). So increased diagnosis is not the cause of increased type 1 diabetes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Seeing an opening, rising powers are trying to reorganize global affairs along civilizational lines.
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting post - the four examples are an extremely useful and valuable update for people who haven't been paying attention to important countries that don't get adequately covered in US media.


One area where I think you need to be more careful if you are trying to attempt an analysis is the distinction between a clash of civilisations and a clash between civilisation and barbarism. The post-2001 "war" on Salafi jihadi groups including Al-Quaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram was widely billed as a clash between Western and Islamic civilisations, but the jihadis turned out to be barbarians, and civilised Muslims recognised this and ended up playing a key role in the struggle against them.


Vlad the Gasman may claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a move in a civilisational conflict between Rossiya and the West (he may even honestly believe this), but the masses on both sides are treating the war like a barbarian invasion of a civilised country. The only thing motivating Russian troops to fight is the prospect of rape and plunder, and when the rape and plunder dries up we see a rush for the exits. And Russophones in eastern Ukraine have notably failed to rally to the Russian cause in the way we would expect if this was a civilisational conflict.


The case which would be an unambiguous clash of civilisation vs civilisation is a conflict between the West and China. Although this is getting more likely, it is obvious that neither side wants even a cold war, heaven forfend a hot one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The important difference is that Gawker was punished for saying true things about powerful people that they wanted to keep secret (the real crime was outing Peter Thiel as gay, the pretext was invading Hulk Hogan's privacy by publishing a sex tape) whereas Alex Jones is being punished for telling lies about ordinary people who happened to become newsworthy because they were involved in a tragedy.


Whatever you think about the wisdom of giving human governments this power, God convicts Alex Jones and acquits Gawker.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the UK and (as far as I am aware) Australia, racial slurs are traditionally treated as slurs rather than swear words. So things like the use-mention distinction and the parody exemption apply (although not in media targetted at children). My white lips have emitted the phonemes n-short i-hard g-schwa while discussing Lee Atwater's political strategy, giving examples of words you can't say on TV, giving examples of words you can say in private but shouldn't, and caricaturing racist gammons. All of these were socially acceptable in the UK.


In terms of relative severity, "Paki" in the UK is as bad as "Nigger", possibly worse. Both would result in a beatdown and/or prosecution if used to insult an identifiable member of the group referred to, and cancellation if used to insult the group generically. In a poll of words that shouldn't be used on TV, "Nigger", "Paki" and "Cunt" come out as far worse than anything else. (Unfortunately this is less obvious from the report than it was in the raw data, which I can no longer find online)


This has probably changed since George Floyd became the current thing in summer 2020 at a time when PMC Brits were very online by default due to COVID and therefore were more susceptible to Septic ideas.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Although it would definitely be thought of as offensive I don't think the word Paki is considered nearly as bad in the UK as nigger is in the US.




I agree - the point is that "Paki" in the UK is roughly as bad as "Nigger" in the UK. "Nigger" in the US is worse than both, understandably given the history. I don't know how old you are, but when I was growing up in the 1980's in London, both words were fairly widely used by older people because a lot of older people were racist and it was still socially acceptable to be racist in early 1980's Britain. By the time I was old enough to understand such things in the late 1980's, I knew that the polite words were "Black" and "Pakistani". But the British were and still are much more tolerant of rude jokes than Americans if they are actually funny. We all knew that we were being offensive when we asked "How did the Romans annoy the Pakis" but did it anyway because we were schoolboys telling racist jokes in the same way schoolboys told bawdy jokes.


By the late 90's, you could probably get away with calling a Chinese restaurant "Chinky" outside specific PC circles (I have to say that in the circles I moved in it was always "Chink"), but calling an individual Chinese person that to their face was risky. "Chink" was definitely acceptable in jokes ("You are the weakest Chink. Goodbye"), in contexts where rudeness  was expected ("Keep the Chink away from my sister") or reclamatory use by Chinese people. I would not have said "Nigger" or "Paki" at all by then unless I was protected by the use/mention distinction or obviously parodying something.


FWIW, the report I link above puts "Chinky" into the worst of the three categories they use, but it is clear from the comments as well as from the no-longer-online raw data that "Nigger" and "Paki" are worse than the other "strong" racial slurs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Only accidentally by people who can't tell the difference. It does apply to Bangladeshis - Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan at the point where the term started being used as a slur in the UK.


As far as I am aware, the term is not a slur in English-speaking communities in Pakistan itself, and only a mild one in other English-speaking countries.