RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
If it's so effective, why hasn't Israel won yet? They blow up Hamas leaders all the time. They've done this for decades. Blowing up leaders was a good chunk of US counter-insurgency doctrine too.
Can you think of a single war that was won by assassinating the enemy's leader? I can't.
There's no shortcut to winning, you have to actually defeat your enemies the hard way.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Russia has been intensively bombing Ukraine with thousands of missiles for several years and they have not yet broken a country of 30-40 million. Iran is twice as populous. There is nothing that Israel can do to greatly harm Iran short of a nuclear strike or a US invasion, at which point we may learn how well developed the Iranian nuclear program really is. Assassinating leaders does not matter, it's totally irrelevant.
Meanwhile, Iran can fire off hundreds or thousands of missiles in a non-telegraphed attack for a change, overwhelm the Iron Dome and demolish Israel's first-world high-tech economy. Israel is a small country, it is inherently easier to bomb and wreck than Iran. Nobody is going to build chip factories in a warzone. Oil is stuck in the ground, laptop workers and tech companies can leave for safer climates.
Does Iran want to get into a massive painful struggle with Israel and presumably the US? No. But their patience is not unlimited. It's not 2003 anymore, Americans have gotten a little less gullible about these Middle Eastern wars. It's not 2003 anymore, Western firepower apparently can't deal with little countries like Yemen. Times have changed and Israel should adjust its tactics to meet the new situation.
Quite right. The Arab Oil Shock was a direct result of US military aid to Israel. Massive economic damage there. Osama Bin Laden's Islamic extremism was to a significant extent motivated by treatment of Palestinians as he correctly realized that expensive US military aid to Israel was being used against them (and Lebanon + others).
And then there was the Iraq War which is still explained as a kind of mysterious anomaly. Israel was pushing for it the whole time, Sharon and so on. They provided false intelligence about WMDs. There were all kinds of generals and knowledgeable figures who said things like 'Oh of course we know that the US isn't threatened if Iraq acquires nuclear weapons but Israel certainly is'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I recall that Sharon told Putin (who was leading a push for WMD inspectors to verify whether Iraq did have WMDs) that the time for inspections was over, it was too late. His spokesman Ra'anan Gissen certainly went around spruking the WMD story.
Netanyahu was publishing op-eds calling for war. Foreign minister Shimon Peres said on CNN that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and that the United States "cannot sit and wait." A month later, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post recommending that the Bush administration "should, first of all, focus on Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein."
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Left wingers don't make an explicit case for importing deliveroo drivers from Pakistan
They don't usually make a public case for doing it but they do defend it after it's done. Recall 'diversity is our greatest strength' and the other multiculturalism slogans. This stuff is taught in schools, it was taught to me in Australia. In the old days, everyone was white and British and that was bad. Now taxi drivers and lawyers can be Chinese or African or whatever and implicitly that's good. They didn't explicitly say bad and good but the meaning was impossible to miss.
In the UK specifically there was a letter about how the New Labour immigration program had one of its causes being to rub the Right's nose in diversity, that it was social policy as well as an economic operation: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249797/Labour-threw-open-doors-mass-migration-secret-plot-make-multicultural-UK.html
Furthermore they live off the tax contributions of people like me
What do you actually do as a self-described effete button-pusher? Something in finance I'm guessing. Much of finance has nothing to do with the real economy, it is an actively parasitic element. This is especially so in Britain, where the pound is propped up by a bloated financial sector to the detriment of real industries. We do not need enormous derivative and collateralization schemes to advance technological civilization. Things ran just fine (indeed they ran better) back before financial services was prestigious and lucrative. Indeed, the lesser sons of well-to-do families did a far better job running the financial system than the galaxy-brain quants and managers running it now. This financial experiment of 'lets transfer our industries to poor countries to exploit labour differentials' was the most idiotic decision in human history, it was naked looting of national strength for private gain. Only now are the astonished thieves in the economic and political class realizing the extent of their folly. Only now are they beginning to understand what happens when they break the social contract.
Things ran just fine before millions of Indians and Africans were imported to Britain. Indeed, the country was one of the greatest world powers, at the forefront of science and industry. There was next to no crime. There was a strong social contract. There were no Pakistani rape gangs aided and abetted by the same anti-racist ideas that aid you.
These same people that you keep sneering at are descended from the ones who saved India from Imperial Japan, who would probably have been somewhat less lenient with the affirmative action quotas. Do you feel no shame in constantly abusing your benefactors?
All of the problems the elites are flailing and failing to manage are purely self-inflicted. Demographic decline? Maybe they shouldn't have tried so hard to lower fertility due to 'overpopulation'. They could've kept making houses so that young people could've had families (but that would've lowered real estate appreciation). Refusing to take care of older family members? They installed the pension system, they made the perverse incentives. Their whole job is to lead, that's why they get their privileges and pay.
the non-natives are all people who were either themselves selected by the UK as being positive for the country
They were selected because some greedy university wanted to pump up its income by selling access to a higher-wage labour market. They were selected because they keep labour costs down and pump up property prices. They were selected because some Labour politician wanted to rub the Right's nose in diversity, like you've been saying.
The elites have indeed been mashing 'defect' as hard as they can and are clutching pearls the moment their subjects begin to retaliate.
Why is Britain now a net importer? Britain was the workshop of the world, they produced everything! Now they're a financial hub with a few high-tech gems like ARM and Deepmind (foreign owned of course). They just dropped out of the top 10 manufacturers for the first time despite being the ultimate incumbent.
If this is the case then how come they were all outcompeted by us?
Because the old financial system was working to advance the national interest, not just their own private interests. Or at least they weren't sufficiently efficient in pursuing their own private interests that they could harm the country. Yes it is more economically efficient to shut down the British car industry and import from Thailand, from the perspective of the individual company or consumer. But it is not a good thing for the country as a whole to lose industries, lose jobs and end up with deprived areas, mass unemployment and welfarism. Take the case of the last British steel mill getting shut down by Tata because it was unprofitable... I have no doubt that makes financial sense for Tata. But what happens if you have other industries that need steel, where are you going to get dense, integrated supply chains and knowledge-sharing effects? You're not going to get them, Korea will get them. Suddenly Britain is less competitive overall and imports are even higher. Each step of the deadly spiral seems very reasonable yet it ends in collapse, capital flight and brain drain. The pound is too high but can't be lowered without greatly affecting living standards, so more and more industries erode and the problems get worse and worse.
In South Korea and China they repressed the financial system, they forced banks to provide capital for industrial and technological development even where it was less immediately profitable than other areas. Now they're highly developed, advanced manufacturers with huge numbers of robots per worker. Britain has fallen behind in automation because they chose a quick-fix approach of importing cheap labour to drive growth. It's not remotely sustainable in the long run, it's only that from the perspective of a firm it must seem like a great thing. Bring in more consumers and keep wages down, no need to raise investment and compromise profits in the short-term! Never mind the impacts on productivity...
Private gain is not necessarily good for the country. A well-functioning financial system supports other national industries like an organ, it doesn't consume them like a cancer.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I want naming and shaming. If you fail this badly, there need to be very serious consequences for you personally. Fines, public humiliation, prison sentence, corporal punishment... Otherwise why would anyone bother doing things correctly in future?
What if a selection of Crowdstrike executives, coders and management had to have 'moron' tattooed on their foreheads?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
This is how we get hundred billion dollar black holes, massive financial crises, wars that go nowhere based on pure fantasy and defiance of reality, 20 years of barking up the wrong tree on Alzheimers research due to fraud...
I believe in regular punishment for regular incompetence but this was above and beyond anything normal. Just doing as you're told isn't good enough for critical infrastructure like this. Any normal person tests updates before releasing them. And in the case of egregious failures where the whole organization has gone badly off the rails, why should anyone trust that they'd do a proper post-mortem? Any investigation should be run by outsiders, that's the most basic step.
Furthermore, punishment enhances public trust that everyone is in it together. The leadership class enjoys prestige and great wealth, they should also accept great penalties if they make massive negligent errors.
So what happens when Elite Human Capital find that they need the consent and willing support of the masses - if say a war happens and they need to Defend Our Values in less hospitable places than Rotherham or Blackpool?
Who is going to fight for them and why? Are they going to offer loot like the armies of old? Are they going to appeal to Our Values? Are they going to appeal to the loyalty of newly imported foreigners - will they fight and die for their new country? Evidence suggests no, roughly as many British Muslims went off to fight for ISIS as joined the British Army.
Elite Human Capital is picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. The materiel superiority they rely upon has been greatly eroded, as shown by a series of failed wars against third rate powers in the Middle East and most recently the Houthis. China and Russia are on a whole other level, they will definitely require a massive effort to defeat. A massive effort requires people who are highly motivated and united with their government whether by nationalism or religion. Thanks to the sublime diplomatic manoeuvres of Elite Human Capital, we will probably have to face both Russia and China plus Iran and North Korea.
The GWOT was a tempest in a teacup compared to any war with China. Bush didn't draft civilians, didn't mobilize industry, he and his successors funded the whole thing with debt. One could calculate that going off to fight was relatively low-risk - you have all the equipment, training, fire support and medivac on your side. You go on patrols and come back to a nice base somewhere fortified. The other guy has an AK, maybe an RPG and some dodgy roadside bombs.
China is a completely different story. That's America's biggest trading partner, Australia's, the EU's. Suddenly stores are empty of all kinds of things. People who thought they were comfortably retired wake up and see that their portfolio is down 30-40% and that the government has taken over much of the economy to regulate prices. Even the US Air Force relies on Chinese parts for its air to ground weapons, everyone else is going to run into massive supply chain problems.
Fighting China and Russia won't be like the wars in the Middle East, it will be absolute carnage. Massive swarms of drones hunting people down day and night, constant shelling, digging trenches, a 'safe' base getting hammered by missiles from thousands of kilometres away. There is no medivac, the other guy has the same tools as you do. One sunk destroyer = one year of Afghanistan deaths. It will be a real test of endurance on both sides even at the conventional level.
A short term burst of patriotic enthusiasm will dry up very quickly when people realize how many casualties are being taken and appreciate that conscription isn't just a joking matter. It won't be happening to other people, it'll be happening to us. All of this pain needs some kind of justification, leaders need to credibly explain why victory must be achieved at any cost.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
He's my favourite poet, constant bangers. 'The Beginnings' is still politically relevant today, in certain circles anyway. Gods of the Copybook Headings, The Hymn of Breaking Strain...
The natives will be forcibly drafted
By who? The Ukrainian 'drag them into the van' approach works because they've been pumping out nationalist and anti-Russian sentiment for years and years, plus they have a very clear threat and plenty of useful history to draw upon. And it only works in that the country hasn't yet collapsed. Huge numbers of people have already fled, they don't want to die for Zelensky.
Trying forcible conscription in a country like America today would be a courageous decision, both amongst politicians and draft officers. The US military was thoroughly demoralized in Vietnam, they could not adequately motivate the troops. A world war against multiple great powers is a much bigger stress-test.
Non-participation is already happening. All across the West, nobody is joining the military. Despite all this geopolitical tension and war propaganda, our armies and fleets are actively shrinking. Elite Human Capital cannot find anyone to die for them, they are lowering physical and mental standards and still falling short as the white population opts out. Qualitative and quantitative decline is already locked in. That's the force that we go to war with, the hard core that the conscripts are supposed to support.
Unwilling soldiers are not very effective in combat and neither are most immigrants (on both HBD and motivation grounds). We are set to lose and lose badly, which is bad for everyone but especially troublesome for the reigning political elite.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I point out that you won't be doing well in a world where the US takes a major loss. Assuming that you're Israeli based on the hebrew and 'your culture' remark, there will be all kinds of problems coming your way. China might like a bit of Israeli technology but they're ideologically and historically committed to the other side of the Middle East struggle, they've been working with Iran for some time now. It'll be back to '67 borders for you and that's a best-case scenario.
Social shaming, an internal drive to be pro-social
That stuff works in a disciplined, united society where men are actually moved if they get a white feather. It doesn't work today, especially amongst young people from Western Europe and its offshoots where nationalism has been all but stamped out and individualism is the order of the day. Nobody is going to get blown up by a drone so that Taiwan can have gay pride parades, only a small fraction truly believe.
obviously literally losing to a foreign power is a lose condition
China is far away. The biggest effects will be political and economic. Ukraine and Asia excepted, we are not looking at annexations. People are already fed up with how government is run, losing a big war will be the end for Elite Human Capital.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Musk surely isn't doing huge chunks of the engineering by himself. But he clearly is good at hiring the right people. You can only do that if you can tell whether someone knows what they're doing or not. He also seems to have a special talent at making those people work harder, motivating people. Based on the biography I read he has strong engineering skills and takes important high-level decisions about how the companies should move forward.
I suspect that Altman is similar. He may not be the greatest coder in the world but he's clearly a master schemer, outmaneuvering the OpenAI board and tapping Microsoft's nigh-limitless resources on generous terms.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Gunn, R. & Marie, L., Jun 2023, In: Global Hip Hop Studies. 4, 1, p. 39-56 18 p.
We need a complete shutdown of academia until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Not a substantial comment but I did see a Romance of the Three Kingdoms meme the other day:
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I saw a long 15-20 minute video of some police officer doing an in-depth analysis (before a few dozen journalists) of why Obama's birth certificate was wrong or copied from someone else's, back in 2016. He showed various anomalies with the handwriting and so on. It seemed perfectly persuasive to me but I'm no forensics expert, how could I tell if that was real or not?
It's totally gone now, there's no way to find it beneath the chorus of 'debunked misinformation'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
That must be it. For some reason I remember it being different but it was 8 years ago. In retrospect it was foolish to look for it on youtube of all websites.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
True. And the story was written by a man. Now I think about it most of the high-profile heroines in fiction are written by men. Buffy, Annabeth, Xena...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Ukraine wants not to be fighting an attritional war, they want to get out of a game that's stacked against them. They want to induce a political crisis in Russia or bring in NATO forces to help them. So they make a big deal out of blowing up warships, sending drones at random refineries, there's a certain fixation about destroying the Kerch bridge. None of this is terribly relevant to the land war. Maybe they hope that getting 30km into Russia will cause the whole rotten structure to come crumbling down? Failing that, they can say that 'oh Russia's "red lines" haven't been crossed when we did this so give us more long-range missiles please'. In addition, they want Russia to react in some way that draws NATO into the conflict. That's what the long-range missiles are for!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Why leave out the part where Musk replied to Breton and told him to go fuck his own face?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Loads of people blamed the Arab Spring (and Syria especially) on climate change. There was a multi-year drought and water shortage in Syria immediately beforehand, food prices rose a lot... Just search up Arab Spring Climate Change and it will come up.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Just reform the industries? It really isn't that hard, China did it and they were coming off a poorer base. The Soviets could've cut the astonishing amount of military spending to free up resources for the civilian sector and waited for oil prices to rise again. That alone would've been enough to get out of the danger zone.
Gorbachev was a world-historical blunderer, he had no idea how the Soviet system actually worked and lacked the power to effectively implement his insane reforms. People don't actually know how shambolic he was, they have this vague notion of glasnoist and perestroika but no concrete facts of what specifically he did:
Israel can't defend its own citizens on its own soil, they're hardly doing better than Iran. Rockets are constantly getting through their missile defences because missile defence (at least the missile defence Israel is trying to do) fundamentally is not cost-efficient. Northern Israel has basically been abandoned because of this. Every so often drones hit Tel Aviv, the Houthis snuck one through just a few days ago.
One year in, Israel has failed to destroy Hamas. They've blown up a lot of Gaza, yes, but they don't control the territory and they haven't beaten the weakest of their three primary enemies. As soon as the IDF gets sick of being ambushed and pull out of any one part of Gaza, Hamas moves right back in. I can tell you that Israel didn't recently decide to start bombing Hamas leaders, they've been doing this for years. That was their mowing the lawn strategy. They do this all the time and it clearly doesn't work because just after the last exchange of rockets and bombs we had October 7th:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/mow-lawn-israel%E2%80%99s-strategy-perpetual-war-palestinians-185775
So many people here are posting as if this is another crushing Israeli victory like the Six Day War. It's not!
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