MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
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User ID: 1678
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
10mo ago
Nobody seems to talk about the RU-UA war here anymore. I guess it's because we're saturated with it everywhere else.
Yet given that Ukraine has launched what is unquestionably the largest offensive since the Kharkov surge in late September when it took back wide swathes of territory, I believe a status update is warranted.
First, it is immediately clear that the Russians are much more prepared this time. The area that Ukraine took back in autumn was barely defended by a rag-tag group of volunteer militias. That was a big lapse by the Russian general command, which also led to the big mobilisation drive. This time is different.
Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains. Western officials like the CIA chief or the US foreign secretary have all pointed out that the aftermath of the offensive will shape upcoming negotiations. Given that Ukraine has little to show for their offensive thus far, this inevitably casts a dark shadow on any prospects for large territorial compromises. Why would the Russians give the Ukrainians something at the negotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield?
To my mind, the best that Ukraine can hope for now is a stalemate. This war has shown that in the era of ubiquitous ISR capabilities, trying to surprise your enemy is much harder if he's on his toes (which the Russians weren't in the autumn, but they are now). Consequently, offensives are simply far costlier and harder. The Russians had the same problems, which is why capturing Bakhmut took such an absurdly long time.
For those of us who would want to see a negotiated settlement, the reality is that neither side is running out of money or arms. Russia is spending a moderate amount of money and the West can keep supplying Ukraine enough to keep going for years if the decision is made that defensive action is the way to go. The only way this war ends is if the West tells Ukraine to give in and accept large territorial losses in return for a settlement and possibly security guarantees. Such an outcome would be nearly impossible to sell to Ukraine's domestic public and would almost certainly end the career of whoever was leading the country, including Zelensky. Whatever comes out of this war, I'm not optimistic about Ukraine's long-term prospects.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
8mo ago
Vivek Ramaswamy has written an article on his foreign policy doctrine, focusing on China.
He is squarely taking aim at the "neocons and liberal internationalists", in other words the two main constituents of what Obama referred to as "the Blob" dominating foreign policy in D.C. He is predictably being called an isolationist and WaPo columnists are freaking out.
WaPo columnists themselves are not relevant but they are often mouthpieces for more powerful interests. Trump was hated for many things but one underappreciated aspect of why the Blob hated him was his instinct not to start new wars. In fact, he is one of the few presidents in recent memory who did not start a new war and he tried to get out of Syria - twice - but was undermined by his own bureaucracy.
Vivek is a much smarter guy than Trump, so I wonder if the Blob would be able to run circles around him the way they did around Trump. I doubt it and I suspect they doubt it too, which is why I think a campaign to destroy Vivek is likely to ramp up before too long. Trump couldn't be controlled outright but at least he could be misled.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
10mo ago
Remember "creeping Sharia Law" that far-right hysterics were warning about 10-15 years ago? Of course it was always ridiculous, but now something pretty amusing has happened.
‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
What stood out to me was the support of right-wing activists from nearby towns. So this isn't just a moslem issue, even white Republicans are joined up. Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.
For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.
Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.
The last gasp of the europoor
For years, I've been treated to a steady diet of smug elitism coming from effete liberal Europeans laughing at obese, gun-toting and bible-thumpin' Americans. This reached its crescendo during the George W. Bush administration, took a lull during the Obama years and was resurrected after Trump took office.
The American was an ignoramus, a loud-mouth, a religious fundamentalist and irreversibly stupid. Hopelessly inferior to us sophisticated and cosmopolitan Europeans. Did you know half of Americans don't even own a passport? Most don't even know a second language!? Ha! And don't get me started on their healthcare, their gun crime and all other sorts of social pathologies. America, you see, is a third world nation masquerading as a first world one.
But as the years went by, these smirks felt increasingly hollow. The economic distance - and with it, standard of living - between the two major partners is growing wider by the day. A young French econ professor at Wharton lays out the bad news over just how deluded his fellow Europeans are on this question. Prominent FT columnists have noted the same.
Yet, perhaps there is still time to save the last shreds of honor for us poor Europeans. For one, the gap in PPP terms doesn't seem to be changing much. Europe has been behind for a long time. In terms of total GDP, the situation is much the same. Another aspect is that Europeans tend to work fewer hours.
While some of these arguments may have some validity, they all feel like desperate excuses. I for one am very much happy to see the insufferable elitism of Europeans slowly being wiped off our collective smug faces. The uncouth and primitive barbarian across the ocean turned out to be smarter and harder-working all along.
Perhaps this can also lead to a more pro-capitalist liberalism in the US. For much of my upbringing, liberal Americans were typified by folks such as Michael Moore and his obsessive admiration of the European welfare state. Colbert's snark about the embarrassing Red State American always felt like an underhanded way to gain favor with declassé elites across the ocean. Ann Coulter's observation that liberal elites in the US loved soccer because it is European surely hit closer to home than many in the media were willing to admit.
Of course, there is still some amount of liberal American simping left in the bag. This is perhaps most obvious whenever there are discussions on urban policy and the words "walkable city" invariably comes up. (To be clear, I actually think Europe gets this part better than the US).
Outside of an increasingly narrowing set of areas where Europe still outperforms, we are slowly witnessing a reshuffling of the deck. The old illusions are slowly coming undone and reddit-tier arguments about the US being a third world hellhole are convincing fewer by the day. At long last, after years of insufferable and unjustified smug elitism, the europoor is finally unmasked as the sham living on a lie that he always was. And I couldn't be happier.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
9mo ago
So Georgia Meloni, the supposed far-right firebrand of Italy, is now planning to radically open up visa access for non-EU migrants. PiS in Poland are planning similar measures, even as they've let in record number of workers from moslem-majority countries since they've took power. Of course, the rhetoric from both the Italian and the Poles are all about asylum seekers and illegal migration. Sort of reminds me of GOP rhetoric about stopping people at the border even as they get jawboned by business lobbies to liberalise legal avenues for work visas.
It's the same thing here and it deserves to be pointed out that these fake populists in Europe are ultimately in thrall to the same power system as the old parties are. What's driving large-scale migration isn't some evil plot. It's not Soros or even the Kalergi plan. It's just capitalism. Both of those individuals may be colorful but ultimately the driving force is structural.
Of course, my explanation is boring, perhaps even banal, which is why it will never take off. Not enough drama. As for these developments, I think Europe should be a bit "pragmatically racist" in selecting groups from countries that have a track record of integrating well, e.g. I'd give preference for South-East Asia, but it appears that such a moderate policy is too racist even for the "far-right".
Incidentally, when reading about Max Weber's life in recent days, I found out that he was quite nationalistic as a young man and even campaigned against cheap foreign labour (principally from Eastern Europe). Quite ironic for someone who later became a liberal intellectual, but also amusing in that it shows that this thing has been going on for a lot longer than people realise and it likely won't end soon either.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
10mo ago
The ongoing French riots bring into sharp relief the fantasy that if we just don't talk about race or religion, the issue will disappear. To be clear, I still prefer the French approach because if you don't measure something you can't really do much about it. The main beneficiary of France suddenly going the US/UK route of meticulously collecting racial and religious statistics wouldn't be the far-right but rather the far-left. Racial and possibly religious quotas would soon follow with official state-sanctioned discrimination as the end result.
Yet the rioters clearly view themselves as apart from French society. Even genteel liberal journalists concede as much.
What are the long-term effects going to be? Perhaps I am cynical but I suspect nothing much. France had these kinds of riots in 2005 and they changed nothing.
I remembering reading a lot about Islam and immigration in the 2010-2012 time period, during which many UK conservative personalities were praising the French approach of "aggressive assimiliationism" as opposed to the supposedly feeble multiculturalist approach preferred by the UK. It seems to me that there's no functional difference. The UK had its own riots in 2011. One could plausibly make the case that the BLM riots in the US during 2014 and then 2020 fall under the same rubric.
Whatever the system, these periodic events happen in diverse societies and then they are forgotten until the next outbreak. The system isn't strong enough to overcome racial and religious differences completely but it's also much stronger than many right-wing doomers seem to think. After the kerfuffle everyone moves on. There's no reason to think it will be different this time.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Well, I guess it was only a question of time before the ADL condemned Dave Chappelle and SNL more generally for "popularising" anti-Semitism.
Chappelle had a SNL monologue a few days ago where he walked a tightrope between supposedly condemning Kanye and Kyrie before slyly signal-boosting some of their talking points. Kanye comes across as crazy and Kyrie as plain dumb but Chappelle is neither, so this is arguably bigger news. Of course, Chappelle has been courting controversy before, such as his perceived anti-trans comments or complaining about college kids being too sensitive these days.
So I am not sure if this is some kind of cultural shift where black entertainment elites are more willing to criticise Jews or if it is simply Chappelle running towards controversy in order to stay relevant. Maybe it is both. Nevertheless, I think the ADL has by and large been enormously inefficient and self-defeating during these past 6 weeks. It seems even some Jewish publications agree.
Remember the big energy crisis that Europe was supposed to be doomed with for years to come? Yeah, it's pretty much gone. Worth pointing out two things.
First, natural gas demand has been much weaker than anticipated since China is weaker. Indeed, there is now a surplus of gas in the world market.Some people claim that "last winter we got lucky", but this doesn't explain how gas storage is at historically high levels. Germany, Europe's biggest gas consumer, has an excellent position going into the autumn.
Second, renewable energy is beating new records by the day. In Northern Europe, electricity prices are bouncing around zero and occasionally dipping below the line into negative territory.There's also a structural trend of rapidly growing renewable energy, which means that even as gas prices return to historical norms, it is unlikely that consumption will stay the same. The shift now underway to renewable and clean energy (e.g. nuclear) is permanent. Russia had its chance at energy blackmail and it turned out it was a dud.
I think there are a couple of conclusions to draw from this. The most important one is that scaremongering and hysteria rarely pays to listen to. We can broaden this to a discussion about climate change or even immigration. Sure, there will be issues, but the doomsters on both issues were proven wrong historically. So were the doomsters on Europe's supposedly "permanent energy crisis" thesis.Then why do people persist by wallowing in fear? I don't have a clear answer but perhaps there are evolutionary adaptions that were beneficial to those who were erring on the side of caution?
Another important takeaway for me is once a crisis gets going you should never underestimate humanity's capacity for adaption and change. The system we inhabit may look brittle, but it's probably a lot more sturdy than we give it credit for. Some of us still remember the panicked predictions about the food supply chains breaking down when Covid hit, and plenty people stocked up on tons of canned food, often for no good reason. Some even talked of famine.
Perhaps being the optimist just isn't socially profitable. You're taken more seriously by being a "deeply concerned" pessimist. If this is true, then social incentives will be skewed to having the bad take. People who will be aware of this will probably draw the right conclusions in times when most other folks are losing their minds in fear.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Yes, that's an actual headline at Yahoo News, published just a week ago. It's basically a long anti-white rant by a bigoted ethnic activist. I am fascinated that white Americans are so sissified in the face of this open bigotry. In many ways, their patience is Christ-like. I for one don't hope for a tit-for-tat development, because this world needs less tribalism and conflict. But as long as anti-white racism isn't called out, I can't take people who claim to be anti-racists seriously. And the editors at Yahoo news allowing this vile rant to be published shows that its ingrained in US culture.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Apparently the UK's entire net worth was £10.7 trillions in 2020 according to the ONS, their chief statistic agency. What's remarkable is that a whopping 60% of that is "non-produced, non-financial assets".
That's a fancy way of saying land. Why isn't this fact more well known? Should we expect it to be different for other countries? And why aren't more people talking about Georgism?
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
10mo ago
There's a lot of hype surrounding India. The US clearly wants to boost the country to provide a Western-oriented alternative to China. No other country has the scale comparable to China and India's demographics are much better (26 million births compared to China's 10). The Indian diaspora is very successful in the US and largely pro-American and anti-China. So what's not to like here?
To India boosters like Noah Smith, there's pretty much nothing to be skeptical of. He sees the emergence of an Indo-US alliance in all but name as a necessity.
For this alignment to make sense, India must actually become a real alternative to China. Is this plausible?
First, India's economic structure is dominated by services and elite services at that (IT exports). Its manufacturing sector has been very weak. Modi tried to change this with his 2014 "Make in India" campaign. We've now gone almost a full decade since then and there's basically been zero movement on this issue. India boosters will claim that this is simply because decoupling never really got serious until now. But the problem with this line of argument is that the rhetoric is changing. Even Raytheon's CEO is claiming decoupling is impossible; the new watchword is "de-risking" which is a tacit admission that China's integration into the world's supply chains is far greater than the Former Soviet Union ever was, which is why the analogies to the Cold War are often misleading at best.
Second, a key part of China'a ascent was built on skilled, but cheap labour. Economists often overstate the importance of labour costs. What matters is productivity. Labour costs can increase as long as productivity increases faster: this is what drives long-term growth.
Nobody is denying that India has cheap labour, but is it skilled? Moving past the rarefied IT, pharma and finance sectors that dominate India's services, we find a much bleaker landscape.
50% of Indian kids are functionally illiterate. Female literacy has actually worsened over time. Though this is partly a function of the school system taking in far more kids than before. Yet Vietnam and Indonesia did the same yet did not notice such a fall. Finally, there's no improvement over the past decade.
We can argue over whether education matters much for simple manufacturing. Economists like the heterodox Ha-Joon Chang of South Korean descent has argued that it really doesn't. Perhaps this was true when SK, JP, TW and other East Asian "tigers" took off in the 1960s. Today, everything is far more digital, even relatively simple manufacturing. Workers need to read basic instructions and should at least be able to operate basic machinery, which in turn requires them to read and operate screens. Being unable to read a simple sentence immediately disqualified half the Indian workforce.
If India were to really become a fully fledged alternative to China, then it means that it would need to scale the value-added ladder the way China has. It can't just produce toys or textiles. It would have to create a fully industrial ecosystem covering the greatest sophistication. Simply put, does India has the human capital base to pull that off? The data seems to draw us to a stark conclusion: not really.
Poverty cannot be an explanation either. Vietnam had a similar per capita GDP to what India has now in the mid-2010s. Yet it did very well in international tests and it has continued to draw in a great number of manufacturing projects in a way that India has been unable to. Some of this may be related to government: Vietnam is a one-party dictatorship like China and can bulldoze through various projects of importance. But a more important explanation is simply that Vietnam has the same combination that China had a generation ago: skilled labour but at cheap rates.
In short, if American elites are now betting big on India supplanting China - or at least becoming a real viable alternative - for manufacturing then it is very likely that they will become disappointed. By the same logic, any talk of decoupling (or "de-risking") is likely to run into the hard wall that the alternatives are either too small (Vietnam) or not up to par (India).
On a sociological note, we should acknowledge that discussions on India are colored by their diaspora in the West, primarily in Anglo countries. This group are an incredibly elite selection, particularly in the US. They come from highly privileged homes with house maids and a cultural aversion to manual labour, and by extension manufacturing. It can hardly be surprising that India was ground zero for fantasies that developing countries can "leap frog" manufacturing into prosperity, despite there being virtually no examples of this in world history (barring petrostates, financial êntrepots like Singapore etc).
I've hoped to convince you of becoming more realistic about India's prospects, even if I support a move to diversify away from China for obvious geopolitical reasons. India's own potential can be hotly debated. Certainly their smart fraction is highly capable and we know that smart fractions are important for driving prosperity. The question before us is if India's much less capable "middle" will prevent it from rapid convergence once the easy gains from growth are gone. East Asia managed to educate the broad masses to fairly decent levels whereas India clearly has not. Should we really expect them to emulate East Asia given these sharp differences? As things stand, the West's current policy completely ignores this question.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
So Musk polled his followers. Asking whether he should as CEO of Twitter. They said no and he said he'd abide by their vote.
My sense is that Elon didn't really want to buy Twitter after thinking it through, this was likely his real reason behind the "Twitter are hiding the amount of fake accounts/bots" argument. When that didn't come through, he ended up with the platform anyway. But being the CEO of Twitter is little more than a highly paid janitor function. You don't have any real power and your primary function is to act as a piñata for vested and powerful interests. It's no fun.
The main challenge for him now is to not lose any money, but it appears to be a long-shot from where I stand. What are the lessons? Tech CEOs don't have much political power despite having loads of money. Even tech owners are surprisingly weak. It may be fun belittling government bureaucrats as do-nothing wordcels but the Twitter saga has conclusively proven they hold the whip hand when the chips are down.
While it may make more sense for most people to go for a STEM career over a humanities, this episode should serve as a warning sign to conservatives who have spent decades dismissing humanities are irrelevant (long before the "woke" era). The SJW campus liberals may be annoying, and perhaps even ridiculous, but ultimately they have more power than you in society. And that power can be leveraged even in STEM areas.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
9mo ago
The Hollywood actors guild is on a strike. They are joining the Hollywood writers' strike, which has been ongoing for a few months. I did not know this, but apparently Fran Drescher (the loudly nasal woman from "The Nanny") is the president of the union.
Is this strike a big deal? Well, for one, it's the biggest strike for over 60 years. But what caught my eye was her rationalisation. You can read a summary of the demands.
A key demand has been surrounding generative AI. Actors do not want companies to create their own AI replicas of actors, nor to use generated voices and faces.
One possibility could be the actors raising the AI bogeyman as a cover to demand better pay. And to be sure, they are asking for a fairer split from the streaming model. Yet the AI demands are not directly linked to compensation per se, but rather asks about blanket bans. This does suggest that AI fears are genuine and real. Given very rapid progress in the generative field in recent years, perhaps they are right to be so.
Whenever I've read about jobs displacement from AI, invariably experts have opined that "the creative stuff will go last". Clearly the people who know their trade best are disagreeing with the experts. I'm not sure if this means that actors are paranoid or if we should disregard the expert consensus. Either way, I suspect we may see more and more of these kinds of Luddite strikes in the future, but perhaps not from those who people expected it from.
Can geopolitics also be culture war? I'd argue yes.
PM Modi: Global South must create new world order
“We, the Global South, have the largest stakes in the future. Three-fourth of humanity lives in our countries. We should also have equivalent voice. Hence, as the eight-decade old model of global governance slowly changes, we should try to shape the emerging order,’’ he said, while underscoring the need to escape the cycle of dependency on systems and circumstances which are not of developing world’s making.
My question is, what makes people living in Third World countries think that just because they are numerous, that means they count? Nigeria has a much bigger population than France. Which country matters more in international affairs? Why is Taiwan so important? The country has a huge footprint in semiconductors despite having only 24 million people. Had it been a primitive basket-case, its potential capture by China would still be opposed but there wouldn't be fears of far-reaching economic ramifications.
I worry that a narrative of "our time is due" has set in, giving birth to unreasonable expectations of international influence that may in fact never materialise for most Third World countries. Once this finally dawns on them, rage and jealousy may set in, a feeling of being betrayed of "our rightful influence". Influence is earned, not given. I'm reasonably optimistic about India but not so optimistic on most other poor large countries (Egypt, Pakistan, Ethiopia etc). Given disparate birth rates over the world, a growing imbalance between countries who hold the actual power versus where most of humanity will increasingly be located could lead to increased international tension.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
11mo ago
So Erdogan won the Turkish presential election in the final round today.
First, a brief guide to Turkish politics. The liberals in Turkey are often paradoxically more racist than the conservatives. This sounds very weird in a Western context but Islam is after all a proselytizing religion. Race is a barrier that must be broken to increase your adherents to the faith. What follows is that if you're a serious moslem (and Erdogan is by all accounts) then you must categorically reject racism.
Unsurprisingly, Erdogan has taken in millions of Syrian refugees and even began to slowly give them citizenships. The liberal/secular opposition in Turkey have no strong religious identity. In its stead, there is often an ethnic emphasis and, as you might imagine, they are not too happy with being flooded with millions of Arabs.
There are of course other factions. Some ultra-hardliners on the right have campaigned even harder against refugees but their main candidate got eliminated in the 1st round and who did he endorse? Erdogan! I never promised this would make sense.
Given how long Erdogan has been in power, I don't think it's necessary to provide some in-depth commentary on the man. He is a "known entity" by now. I suspect the biggest impact will be in foreign policy. The liberal candidate openly distanced himself from Russia during the campaign, whereas Erdogan has repeatedly emphasised his supposed friendship with Putin. Erdogan will also likely want to extract a steep price from the US in exchange of Sweden's NATO membership. The official explanation about some Kurdish terrorists is likely mostly a smokescreen. The US kicked Turkey out of the F-35 programme after the Turks bought the Russian S-400 missile system. Now Turkey wants at least F-16s but opposition in the US congress is steep. Enter the NATO accession diplomacy and you begin to understand the context.
From a European perspective, I am not certain a victory for Erdogan is bad. I don't want to see his country in the EU and while the chance would have been remote if the liberal opposition won, it is all but dead with him in power. Turkey is also more likely to keep refugees in their country, though they will probably continue to intermittently use them as human shields in order to get something they want in exchange from Europe.
One final reflection. Given Erdogan's economic mismanagement, many wonder why he wasn't voted out. I think this is yet another example of the importance of cultural politics. Why has the white working class been voting GOP for many decades despite essentially voting against their economic interests? Because they sense the seething hatred that liberal elites have for them. I suspect it isn't much different in Turkey. Politics is often tribal, more than we give acknowledge in the West, and so who you voted for is often a function of your identity as much as your rational interests.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
2mo ago
One thing that I don't understand is how countries like France, with a larger and often more radicalised muslim population, doesn't seem to have the same problems. Sweden also has a larger muslim population (in proportionate terms) and while Jews in Sweden are under concurrent attack, at least elite institutions seem to weather the pressure fairly well. Their PM is openly saying things like immigrants from MENA have problems with antisemitism and even questioning their loyalty.
Perhaps it's a combination of two things. First, many Islamist radicals are not poor and downtrodden but often well-educated and from relatively more affluent families. Britain's status as a magnet for relatively more prosperous migrants from non-EU sources could perhaps account for this. Second, perhaps the British state itself has been a bit more hands-off rather than the forceful French assimilationist approach. I can't say that it seems like the French have succeeded with their attempts to assimilate these groups, but perhaps an inadvertent side benefit is that they have greater control over various radicals.
As a final note, in a sane society these remote Middle-Eastern squabbles should not have been a major issue in the domestic politics of various Western countries. But we are now well past that point in Europe.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
6mo ago
Israel bent the knee, unsurprisingly. The siege is all but broken. There are also reports floating around that the US is pressuring Israel to delay the invasion. The Israelis basically tried a genteel version of ethnic cleansing by enticing Egypt to take them in, apparently with the blessing of EU+US. But it flopped and the Egyptians told the Europeans that the refugees would be allowed to stream into Europe the first possible moment. Given the explosive politics re: mass migration in Europe, I suspect the Europeans got cold feet and backed off.
So we're seeing two different versions of reality playing out. Israeli statements continue to be incredibly hawkish and all-but-confirming an invasion. Meanwhile the US is undercutting and undermining those efforts by either reversing or delaying Israeli decisions. If Israel will not be able to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip - which it transparently wants to do - then I don't see how they are not walking straight into a trap here.
After a surprisingly fractious negotiating period, Israel finally has a new government in place. The most religious, hard-right government it has ever had! A brief list of its priorities are listed here.
For my part, I remain puzzled over how some of their initiatives are termed anti-democratic. For instance, they want to allow businesses to reject certain customers/requests based on their faith. This reminds me of the "LGBT cake" ordered by a gay couple from a Christian baker in the US a few years ago. One gets the sense that they did it as a provocation, and to rub it in his eyes. He refused, was sued, and the case later went all the way up the courts.
If you're libertarian, shouldn't individuals and businesses be free to associate and do business with whoever they may want? I can see why this would be offensive if you're a leftist, but the charge is that this is "anti-democratic" which isn't synonymous with leftism. Or it shouldn't be, at least.
The coalition agreement is non-binding but rather a statement of principles. How much gets implemented remains to be seen, and there is rife speculation - one may be forgiven for thinking it is wishful thinking - in the media about the current government being short-lived. Either way, Israel's new government will be worth watching for how far a genuine right-wing government can be allowed to travel before it gets blocked by the establishment.
It's also worth mentioning that Prime Minister Netanyahu's own Likud party is substantially more secular than its right-wing/religious partners. So there is also an internal split that Netanyahu has to manage. He is liked by his base, but is loathed by much of the larger Israeli establishment. Particularly in the judiciary and the academic/media class.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
10mo ago
The intellectual arguments come first. Everything else follows.
I used to think it was just a matter of reaching enough people, but I've now come to realise that evidence doesn't really matter for a great number people if it interferes with their ideology and/or personal interest.
The amount of people in the West who would be negatively affected if HBD became the dominant intellectual frame of reference is now massive. They have a clear personal stake at never allowing that to happen. Dispassionate scientific inquiry is in fact something very few are interested in. You can show them a thousand papers. It won't matter. They will only use it to indict you for heresy.
The libertarian Cato institute points out that the US has been losing international scientists in recent years whereas not only has China gained but so has "non-US OECD" countries. The latter is code for Europe and AU/NZ/CA.
The immediate cause is probably the misguided and arguably racist "China initiative" which essentially led to a witch-hunt against ethnic Chinese people. But I suspect domestic factors in China and Europe are also responsible. Both have been ramping up R&D spending in recent years and visa policies in Europe are often more favorable for researchers than American policies are. Easier to get and easier to stay.
It is no exaggeration to say that most of STEM innovation in US academia is now being carried out by foreign-born people. So this development should worry Americans. I also think many people in the West underestimate how much genuine innovation there is in China. Viewing data from the Nature Index, which tracks elite science production, it isn't clear that China is far behind anymore. If at all. In areas like EV batteries, China is now ahead of the West. Progress in their semiconductor industry has been faster than even many insiders had expected.
I still think the US has a series of unique advantages over its competitors, but falling prey to scare-mongering campaigns and McCarthyite tactics isn't going to capitalise on them.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
SBF had a long interview with NYT where they were remarkably soft on him. The whole thing can be read read here.
For my part, it seems like he has little remorse and is spinning things as "things expanded too fast and I made a mistake". The fact that his hedge fund (Alameda Research) was propped up by client deposits without their knowledge is not something he wishes to mention.
Over at Twitter, he has been consistently deleting tweets such as his Nov 7th tweet assuring everyone that FTX has a "long history of safeguarding client assets". Some are speculating that his recent gibberish tweets are in fact a way to keep his tweet count constant, so to not alert bots when a large amount of tweets are suddenly deleted (as some bots may begin to do auto-archiving). In his interview with NYT, he instead spun his new tweets as some kind of cryptic message he wants to send.
All these things re-affirm my view that he's basically a manipulative psychopath. What's disappointing but not surprising is the soft gloves treatment he gets in the NYT. One cannot help but ask whether his status as democrat megadonor plays a part in that.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
You know things are bad when even liberals are despairing at DeSantis' poor performance. I think her analysis is mostly correct. Voters don't really care about issues so much as who is the strong candidate. Trump is funny but also strong. DeSantis is neither - despite being the actual principled conservative by comparison.
Given Kamala's own exposure as a weak air-head, it seems almost inevitable to me that we will see Biden vs Trump once again in 2024. I try not to be ageist but American politics is really becoming a gerontocracy. The refusal of Dianne Feinstein to step down is par for the course.
That said, while I believe the author is right about the primal nature of Trump's appeal, it's probably a mistake to ascribe his popularity entirely to it. I suspect many in the media still haven't understood that he rose as a consequence of structural changes that will outlast him. Seeing the GOP as the more anti-war party would never have crossed my mind during the Bush era when accusations of insufficient liberal patriotism was rife. Now it appears to me that the veneration of the CIA, Pentagon and FBI are all highly liberal-coded.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Surprised so few people talk about Brasil here. Their election (2nd round) is today. It looks like Lula is the slight favourite but even his supporters concede that Bolsonaro has a good shot. For those not in the know, Lula is the social democrat with Bolsonaro best described as "Trump of the Tropics".
Yet a complicating factor is that the new congress has already been elected and it was much more right-wing than expected. So Lula's room for maneuver will be significantly constrained if he happens to win.
There does seem to be a structural undercurrent at play here. A very fast-growing demographic in Brasil are the evangelical Christians, who overwhelmingly favour Bolsonaro. Traditionally, Catholicism has been the bedrock of the nation's social fabric, inherited from the Iberians. So a very fervent form of Protestantism is unquestionably a break from the past where Catholicism was viewed as intertwined with national identity. Whoever wins this presidential election will have to grapple with this changed reality in Brasil.
Incidentally, this also suggests the lazy assumption that "as America gets more diverse it will invariably get more liberal" could potentially not come to pass.
The major thing he misses, or perhaps only elides to, is that the individualist framework that libertarianism was built on has been utterly obliterated
I think this is the key difference. I also think there's a racial angle here. Whites in the US (and in the West more generally) have been the most ardent defenders and practitioners of individualism. The people who told them to do this were using arguments very similar to the ones employed by Jordan B. Peterson.
How did that go? The right has been losing on nearly everything. The only area where the right has won is on economics, but even here there's a question to what extent we should treat neoliberal victory as "right-wing". Previous incarnations of US conservatism (think late 1800s, early 1900s) were deeply critical, if not outright hostile, to capitalism. Those intellectuals viewed capitalism as uprooting traditional ways of life, destroying the countryside and spoiling nature.
It was only with Reaganism (about the time when Cowen was a young lad) that the shift towards equating rampant capitalism somehow became associated with being "right-wing". Perhaps there is a generational divide here.
So to me, the two big differences with the New Right are: A) understanding that working collectively, including using state power, is necessary and dogmatic individualism has failed to reap benefits together. B) neoliberalism is less important than cultural and social issues and can in fact work against you, e.g. many corporations are very woke and have done next to nothing to push back at social trends that the New Right views as harmful or unwanted.
The Big Serge has a good overview of the RU-UA war. The TL;DR is that Ukraine has burned through multiple iterations of armaments and is now reduced to begging for active NATO matériel, hence Germany's reticence to send Leopards. One should understand that Europe's and even America's production capacities have atrophied badly over the decades. Losing hundreds of tanks - the number that Ukraine is asking for - isn't something you replenish within a year.
Serge's prediction that Ukraine will lose the war "gradually, then suddenly" seems plausible given Russia's attrition strategy. If we assume that Russia will win this war, then the question needs to be asked.. how much will actually change? Ukraine as a country isn't particularly important and the population is likely to be hostile to Russia, meaning that to integrate it into Russia proper will be difficult if not impossible.
I keep hearing hysterical rhetoric that the West must win this war or... something something bad. It reminds me of the flawed 'domino theory' that was used to justify the Vietnam intervention. While I don't think NATO will ever proceed towards direct intervention á la Vietnam, I can't help but think that too many of the West's elites have trapped themselves rhetorically where Ukraine's importance is overblown for political reasons (so as to overcome domestic opposition towards sending arms) and it has now become established canon in a way that is difficult to dislodge.
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