MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
No bio...
User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
I think the tradwife vision assumes that one of the skills that would be taught in these "I can't believe it's not finishing school" less-academic women's institutions would be healthy eating. But Ozempic solves the problem withe less effort.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
Observation: as far as I know, there aren't any large corporate chain daycare (and many other large-scale child service providers), possibly because liability risk bounds the benefits of corporate mergers and acquisitions.
Multisite corporate daycares are a thing in the UK, but the reason you don't see large corporate chain daycares is the lack of economies of scale. It is a business which depends on the quality of on-site management, and the best way to motivate and retain quality on-site management is to let them own the business. This is why so many chain restaurants are franchises. And there is no point in franchising daycare because there is no travelling trade of people who have to choose their daycare based on a national brand.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
Critically, the vision assumes a society where no prime-age women are overweight, rather than respectable working class communities in 21st century America where they all are. Most white men think the 20th percentile normal weight woman is hotter than the 80th percentile fatty.
As far as I can see, in real patriarchal societies where food is plentiful, most women start gaining weight immediately after the wedding and are blubberbeasts by middle age.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
If she's a housewife, she doesn't just want your money, she needs it. Wanting a housewife and wanting a woman who isn't excessively interested in your earning potential would, in a sane world, be incompatible.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
The denominator is all women over 15, so Africa should have a higher ratio just because it has a lower percentage of women past retirement age.
Also remember that before the invention of modern appliances, women in paid work was a sign of poverty, not a sign of feminism. 50+ hours a week of housework was needed to achieve a respectable working class standard of housekeeping, so women only worked outside the home if they really needed the money (there was so much housework that modern women with full-time jobs do more hands-on childcare than 1950's housewives).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6hr ago
Right now, if you think that a Jewish conspiracy is a thing you need to watch out for, the Republican establishments (both the old cucked one and the new MAGA one) are obviously more jewed than the current Democratic establishment. This is the near-inevitable flip-side of the pro-establishment left being more tolerant of anti-semitism in its coalition than the pro-establishment right (also clearly true now, although not historically).
If I was a single-issue "stop Jewish paedophiles taking over America" voter, I would be holding my nose and voting Democrat and it wouldn't be a hard choice. You don't need outgroup/fargroup dynamics to explain this.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
14hr ago
I think the more on point precedent is Thomas Friedman's six months to stabilise Iraq. You lose a winnable war one Friedman unit at a time.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
23hr ago
In so far as there was a real attempt at British nation-building after 1603, it was mostly based on anti-Catholicism in general and anti-Frenchness in particular. Hence the difficulty of including Ireland.
Empire-building as a national project was an example of civic nationalism, not ethno-nationalism. Upward mobility was always (in theory) and frequently (in practice) open to colonials who displayed the characteristics of an English or Scottish gentleman, starting with loyalty to the Crown and not being Catholic. No ethno-nationalistic society would have elected Benjamin Disraeli Prime Minister.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
When did Catholic-Protestant intermarriage become socially acceptable in America? You cant combine Anglos and Italians into a single "white American" ethnicity without it.
Germany coalesces as a stateless (because the Holy Roman Empire is both over-inclusive and not really a state) nation surprisingly early - certainly before 1600, and in my read by 1400. (The academic politics of the University of Prague - now Charles University - up to and including the Hussite crisis make most sense understood as a conflict between Germans and Czechs as national groups). Post-Reformation, there is an issue to resolve about whether the German nation is Lutheran (with Catholic Austria excluded) or biconfessional, but nothing as fundamental as the Breton and Occitan issues in France.
Despite being a state, France coalesces as a nation later than Germany. Perhaps because of being a state - from the point of view of a feudal dynastic monarch national identity among your subjects is potentially awkward.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
Bezos was already rich by normal-person standards after four years at DE Shaw, during which he was promoted unusually rapidly so was presumably a high performer. (Incidentally, I think this answers the question about where Bezos Sr got the $600k from - a lot of it was Jeff's own money but in the 1990's startup culture daddy was a better story).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
At least two - Germany and Switzerland. (You may have meant only one country in the EU). Belgium and Spain are marginal cases - they don't use the word but they are probably federal in substance - definitely the top-tier subunits have executive, legislative and at least some judicial power entrenched in the constitution.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
The UK and USA are both explicitly not nation-states from their foundings - that is why they have "United" in their names. (FWIW, Belgium doesn't work as a nation-state either and the Flemish-speaking Belgians who talk like it is one are somewhat ambivalent about including French-speaking Belgians in their project)
You can have a concept of Britishness as a civic identity shared by a closed class of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish (or Northern Irish) people, although there isn't an attempt to actually do that until modern right-populist movements, and it goes down like a lead balloon with the Scottish and Welsh. But the idea that an Englishman and a Scot are part of the same blood-and-soil folk community is offensive to both of us.
The US just is a nation of immigrants as a matter of historical fact. The de facto leader of the anti-immigration movement in American is the grandson and husband of immigrants.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
I use a similar definition - fascism is totalitarian socialism with right-wing aesthetics. (As opposed to communism, which is totalitarian socialism with left-wing aesthetics).
Incidentally, although Singapore is a long way off being totalitarian socialism with neoliberal aesthetics, it is proof of concept that it would be possible.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
This is in the context where the US government has accepted a (probably below-market) premium for quasi-commercial insurance. Sending Xi an invoice would be the US ratting out on an obligation it voluntarily accepted as a gutsy move just a few weeks prior.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
There are a lot fewer stories of the Gilded Age billionaires being personally depraved than there would be for an equivalently-sized group of medieval aristocrats whose escapades were equivalently well-documented. "Robber baron" refers to business practices that were and are considered evil by leftists, but in many cases are still SOP today.
They really were better people than most elites through history. I suspect they were better people than most modern-day billionaires, although it is hard to tell because modern-day celebrities are so well-documented that you hear about every minor extramarital affair, which would not have been the case back in the Gilded Age.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Particularly if they were headed for China. "US taxpayer spends billions bailing out the Chinese because of Trump's unnecessary war" is a very easy message to demagogue.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Yep - this only makes sense if the US can protect shipping, which is unlikely given what we know about the relevant technology (note that based on experiences in Ukraine, the main threat is now land-based drones). It may even only make sense if the US can selectively protect US-insured shipping.
Of course, it not making sense doesn't guarantee Trump won't do it.
The market is apparently clearing again, after a morning where you couldn't buy insurance for shipping through the Straits of Hormuz at any price. The cost is about 3% of the sum insured for a 1-way passage*, an order of magnitude higher than the pre-war price. I suspect that is low enough that ships will start moving again, and we won't see Trumpsurance materialise. Nobody is going to be sailing into a war zone based on a Truth Social post, so until Trumpsurance is at least an executive order it isn't going to affect the facts on the ground.
If I was Trump, I would structure the offer as cheap reinsurance to Berkshire Hathaway (who are the only US insurer sophisticated enough to compete with Lloyds of London) allowing them to undercut the London marine insurance market for primary insurance - a low probability of success but cheap and high-reward attempt to move commercial insurance business from London to the US. Using Berkshire as an intermediary also avoids the "would you buy insurance from a man like Donald Trump?" problem - Buffett's integrity is unquestionable, as is Ajit Jain's (and presumably Greg Abel's, though I don't know enough about him).
* Cargo is usually worth more than the ship, so insuring a VLCC for a round trip is going to be ~5% of the value of the oil
I was thinking actual rich people, not just the upper-middle-class. Not necessarily billionaires, but biglaw partners, VP-level corporate executives, bank MDs. Also prominent politicians, who have a similar level of status as the above even if they only have upper-middle-class incomes.
I don't have any visibility into what kind of second wife a multi-millionaire small business owner in the sticks would go for.
FWIW, the divorced and remarried doctors in my social circle all remarried nurses.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Very much agreed - lore when I was a teenager considering careers was that doctors had some of the highest divorce rates as a result. (No idea if this was or is correct or not)
But the same is true of any other high-earning upper-middle-class career, apart from the life-or-death aspect. The thing that is different about doctors that makes marrying a doctor a meme is their visibility. I suspect marrying a doctor really is the easiest route for a lower-middle-class woman to enter the upper-middle-class.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Not the second time, either.
The typical trophy second wife is either a PR girl or some kind of art ho (like Lauren Sanchez Bezos)
On the flip side, medicine is unusually legible to marriage-minded women who are into that kind of thing as a high-potential career track. There is a reason why <culture X> mother jokes involve the daughter marrying a doctor.
You could probably use "What fraction of lower-middle class women want to be a doctor's wife?" as a measure of family-orientation across ethnic groups.
My read was that it defined working age as 15 and over with no upper limit.
Looks to me like the words inside the brackets explain the locally used meaning of the words before them. Given the very wide range of female retirement ages around the world, I think they would say what maximum age they were using if they were using one.
More options
Context Copy link