RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Unapologetic whataboutism is the best kind. It's no good when people say 'I decided the subject of discussion will be something that paints me in a good light and you in a bad light. No it's actually a fallacy if you try and do the reverse'. The rhetorical tool of whataboutism favours those with the bigger megaphone, those with agenda-setting power.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
The Chinese social credit system is hugely overrated in intensity. You don't really lose Social Credit quantitatively if you're late to dinner like Noah Smith seems to have thought: https://x.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1780129054240510461
Most of the obtrusive stuff the Chinese state does is just the same old heavy-handed policing but with modern surveillance technology. If they don't like you the police will bring you in to 'drink tea' with them and mess with you. If you dissent on the internet they can get rid of your content the old fashioned way, with human/machine censors. East Germany didn't need social credit to be totalitarian and neither does China. The strongest anti-Chinese arguments shouldn't be social-credit related.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
That is a good, thought-provoking response. My primary concept of libertarianism is pursuit of a smaller state which just does less in all domains generally. The Britain of 1900 vs the Britain of 1950 for instance. One of the most important liberties strikes me as not getting dragged away by draft officers, heading off to fight and possibly die in a trench somewhere. Or having to pay high taxes (which are needed for powerful armies). Reason-magazine libertarianism might be seen as inauthentic by other schools of thought I guess but it does seem like libertarianism.
There's nothing inherent in libertarian philosophy that requires a low state capacity for dealing with external threats
With regards to state-capacity libertarianism, I have fewer complaints. It does lead to an increasingly expansive definition of military capacity though. You obviously want to have state arsenals and dockyards, that expands out into investments in steel and chemicals, support for heavy industry and power plants, technical education in schools... At some point it merges with a nationalist state's military-industrial complex. It's a basically continuous spectrum. But at the far end you end up with China's five year plans to develop strategic industries and huge state investments to reorient the economy on autarchic lines, inculcate patriotism and nationalism into the youth and it can hardly be called libertarian. They've clearly passed some key threshold a long time ago.
libertarian attitudes thrive in places like the Anglo-Scotch border region, the Comanche tribes of North America, I hear perhaps Somalia
Was the Anglo-Scottish border really that bad? It was bad by British standards. Most of Britain was pretty peaceful. There was long-term low intensity violence. Likewise with the American westwards expansion.
But it was not extremely severe violence. The Native Americans could not produce 80,000 troops seemingly out of nowhere and ride up to besiege Boston like the average steppe horde circa 500 AD. Cities weren't being razed to the ground. It was not the kind of violence that threatens national extermination if you lose - it was that for the natives, not the Europeans. In Eastern Europe you had cities getting razed and countries getting wiped off the map all the time. In Asia you had steppe nomads showing up and exterminating whole countries. Or they'd install themselves as the leaders and conduct humiliation rituals. Small kin groups and decentralized defence works against a small tribe of natives but will not hold back the Mongols, Goths or Manchu.
I think there's a certain kind of sympathy Anglos think we have with the Eurasian powers. In Australia we have ANZAC Day and bands playing The Last Post, there's a lot of mythologizing. In the US there's supporting the troops and so on. But our wars are nearly always fought overseas and/or against much weaker opponents. In WW2 we lost 0.5% for Australia and 0.3% for the US. Not 17% like Poland or 13% like the Soviet Union. That is a totally different kind of warfare.
Doing what the US did in WW1/2 and switching from huge civilian industry to wartime industry when war arrives is a privilege of geography and size. In 1941 the US Army was smaller than the Portuguese army, that just wouldn't work in Eurasia. The most important thing for winning a huge struggle like WW2 is being big, industrialized and resource-rich, military efficiency and ideology is secondary. If the US had to cope with having negligible oil production like Germany, a population 50% lower, shortages of iron, nickel, chromium and just about everything except coal... German victory in Europe would be hard to avoid.
Germany is the heartland of the Anglo-Saxons (who, if memory serves, were noted in antiquity for their egalitarian attitudes) and (almost) the geographical home of the Austrian school of economics!
Germany is also the home of Prussian enlightened absolutism and militarism, von Schleicher's Military State, Marxism and national socialism itself, I don't think it can necessarily be claimed as a bastion of libertarianism. It's certainly not a very libertarian state today and wasn't historically, aside from the Holy Roman Empire period.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Britain does have an aircraft carrier and enough H-bombs to put a real dent in any country on the planet. The weakest of the strong powers is still a strong power.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
To a certain extent sure, but it's usually only very sheltered peoples that embrace libertarianism. The British avoided the need for a large standing army because of their geography. The US enjoyed the luxury of having no strong powers in their entire hemisphere. Neither power ever really suffered at the hands of any foreign forces like the less fortunately positioned countries.
If you tried libertarianism in central Europe or Asia, then you're in for some really bad experiences. Germany - 25% dead in the Thirty Years War. Unity is strength, be the hammer not the anvil. Poland -- annexed because they weren't strong and autocratic enough. Decisive, central leadership has its virtues. China - massive crises and disasters with tens of millions dead whenever the state shows weakness. Don't show any weakness.
What is the libertarian response to a bunch of bandits coming over the hill? There's more of them then there are of you. They're bandits, they're professional robbers and you're an amateur homestead defender. You need numbers, you need preparation, you need professionals, you need a state to fight them off. The only way to be without those things is if people are benign and don't decide to repress you in the first place. In fact the bandits could make their own state as stationary bandit. They become the nobles that own all the land that you pay taxes to, they provide protection. Either way you lose freedom if there are enough bad people.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
That's fair. I suppose that's another way of looking at his Anglophilia. I see it as 'Germans and English are basically the same people, let's work together' but you could go 'the English are also a top-tier race (plus China/Japan), let's work together'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
I agree, good post. Hitler is not complicated.
Hitler's goal was to increase the strength of the German people by uniting them and conquering more land to settle. Land is the base of national strength. You need lots of good land if you want a large population and a strong country. He wanted this because Hitler conceptualized the world as a competition between nations, the state is a suit of armour for the nation. That's what identity politics is. It's the belief that politics is about using the state to strengthen and benefit one's people. It's about creating the biggest, toughest suit of armour that can brush aside any physical or psychic attack in a dangerous, bloody world. And you are allowed to strike first, if necessary.
This is totally against the concept that politics is about doing good in some universal sense, or leaving people alone.
The libertarian sees the state as a bikini that should only provide the bare minimum of protection, provide the maximum freedom of movement. They think that the world and other peoples are fundamentally good, the environment is pleasant and danger is rare. If you're on a tropical island why constrict yourself with clothing?
The moralist sees the state as a fashion statement, a social statement, a political message, it's about ensuring that the poor textile workers received a fair wage. Thus the state can be bound by international law, clothing is bound by fashion. The international community matters, those judging eyes are watching. Trendsetters should be followed. Getting one's hands dirty is to be avoided, you don't want to get blood on these jeans!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Pick out some tech stocks you like. Nvidia or ARM or whatever you believe in. Make a thesis.
Index funds are boring, guaranteed mediocrity and it is very possible to beat them. I beat the NASDAQ by 78% over the last two years and probably much more over a longer period (the chart my bank gives me stops in September 2023), mostly thanks to being early on NVIDIA and crypto last cycle. It's not impossible to make those calls and beat index funds. You don't need to read reports, outsmarting the giga-quants at hedge funds isn't about doing more work or being smarter than them, it's just about deducing the right thesis from having the right vibes. The numbers are already priced in, vibes are where the alpha is.
Of course I've made lots of mistakes and lost lots of money in various errors. That is inevitable if you make aggressive moves and control your own money. I encourage against using leverage. I encourage patience. But risks are needed to earn rewards.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Yes Minister is relevant as ever: https://youtube.com/watch?v=En4lu_1bcsI
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Wisdom involves judging and drawing up permissible and impermissible risks.
Playing football in high school is risky. Self-testing novel chemical amphetamines you bought online is also risky. But they're not the same kind of risk.
Having sex with a 17.9 year old or an 18.1 year old doesn't seem very different. But it doesn't then follow that 35 year old men should have ready access to 12 year old girls. At some point a line must be drawn on a qualitative, continuous and complicated scale. And people must fundamentally reason out a series of rules, guidelines and reasonable applications of flexibility in special cases to make this work.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Maybe consider something, anything, a little more broad and wide-ranging than one battle? It's not like this is a new idea:
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Maybe it was because the Americans knew they had total air superiority, columns of tanks (with fuel!) and broad numerical superiority. They could wait for the weather to improve. They could expect relief.
And the goal of the offensive was not 'encircle and destroy a few cut off Americans' but 'reach Antwerp and cut off the entire American army'.
How about the first three attacks on Monte Cassino? Or Operation Market Garden?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Firstly "putting all of Israel-Palestine under American control so as to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from hating each other for long enough" would make it extremely difficult to do anything about China.
Secondly, chaos finds its way to America precisely because of its support for Israel. First World Trade Centre bombing motive? US support for Israel. 9/11? Osama Bin Laden was heavily influenced by his anger over US support for Israel.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
If Germany was able to surprise France after a good 9 months of Phoney War, then something was really wrong with France. Britain had years to notice that Germany was building up a powerful army and yet couldn't manage to get enough troops to France in time...
Israel isn't really that liberal, they're more like Britain in the early 19th century or (ironically) Nazi Germany. Liberal countries don't conduct opportunistic border revisions, evict people and settle their land. Liberal countries don't sterilize Ethiopians. Liberal countries don't launch sneak attacks on their neighbours. You wouldn't see Americans storming a military base to protest the imprisonment of soldiers accused of raping civilians.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Again, we look at a map. The British empire: Canada, India, half of Africa, Australia. The French Empire: the other half of Africa. America! Russia! Gigantic global empires - plus Italy, Romania and Japan.
The German Empire? 2 tiny scraps of land in Africa and Papua New Guinea. The Austro-Hungarian empire? Small, poor and disorganized. The Ottomans? Mid-sized, poor and disorganized, the sick man of Europe.
Germany had no rubber, little iron, not enough food, they had to choose between fertiliser and explosives.
Germany was massively overperforming, fighting three huge empires to a standstill and knocking Russia out of the war while France and Britain underperformed considering their size and access to world markets. But it was a totally stacked war where most of the strong powers were on one side.
(Italy had universal male suffrage since 1912, it was arguably more democratic than Britain in WW1 but their military performance was horrendous).
My theory is not that autocracy correlates to positive military performance but that liberal countries have inferior military performance considering the size and resources of the powers involved. Autocracies have a huge range from astonishing capacity to horrendous. But liberal states are regularly subpar.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Why? What's the point?
Should the US go in and annex the Congo and Rwanda to stop them fighting? Should America get involved in Ngorno-Karabakh? Annex Kurdistan and sort things out? Go into Kashmir? Annex Donbass?
Even if the US had the military-political power to 'fix' these things, which is very dubious... why even try? What does it gain for the US? How are US interests at stake in these places, such that the effort expended and risks incurred would be commensurate with the gains?
If someone on the other side of the city has a feud with his drug dealer/girlfriend/gambling partner/brother there's no reason to join this fight and impose yourself as judge and arbiter. It's a lot of work for no payoff. You'd need to be Superman to get away with it. And Superman would be bitterly resented even if everyone had no choice to tremble and obey.
And if you're not Superman...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
I told Deepseek R1 that Donald Trump went from flipping burgers to crypto billionaire in a few months and it started arguing bitterly against me, refusing to accept that it was real and calling me disingenuous. It was kind of funny.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Of course the next five years showed that liberal, capitalist countries were far superior at fighting total wars than their autocratic contemporaries
They were vastly inferior at warfighting, prevailing through sheer size and resources alone.
Germany wiped the floor with Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France singlehandedly. Germany had no oil, no rubber, no tungsten, poor reserves of iron and aluminium, only coal in large quantities. They barely had a navy and only established their air force 4 and a half years prior but put Britain on the ropes nonetheless.
If you look at a map of the powers involved in WW2, you see the sheer scale of allied ineptitude. How can you possibly struggle for so long and take serious defeats when this is the balance of the powers involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_participants_in_World_War_II.svg
It required the primary efforts of three huge countries (one of them fiercely autocratic) to beat Germany. Without the Soviet Union in the war, it's hard to see how Germany could lose in Europe. Likewise with any of the Big Three. Somehow this relatively small country was by far the strongest power in the world, stronger than the next two combined!
And this is despite Messerschmitt being a complete clownshow in procurement and project management, despite German intelligence being horrendous the whole war, despite having their codes cracked, despite not mobilizing fully until 1943, despite bizarre Fuhrer-prinzip orders...
Liberalism is just that bad. After the war, it then took 50 years to overcome the Soviet Union. The Anglo-American liberal alliance had secured all the wealthy, industrialized parts of the world: Western Europe and Japan. The Soviets suffered 27 million dead and conquered the poor parts of Eastern Europe. Their economic system was totally broken. But thanks to liberalism, it was a remotely even struggle. The Soviet puppet government in Afghanistan outlasted Soviet withdrawal, it even outlasted the Soviet Union by a small margin. A liberal puppet government in Afghanistan disintegrated before the withdrawal was even completed.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Vaguely relevant:
https://x.com/jneeley78/status/1886394836195922200
Another of the DOGE Six, Gavin Kliger, has a substack and in response to the Wired article wrote a paywalled post titled “Why DOGE” with a $1k a month subscription price ($10k annual). The post is blank.
People online have been getting really upset at how young people are in charge of the treasury as opposed to boomers under Elon's New Order. I have no real opinion but think it's spectacularly based to set up a troll substack like this. Apparently some of them are super talented, one was decrypting the Herculaneum scrolls with AI.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
If Russia has been struggling to crush Ukraine for the past 3 years even with their munitions advantage, then they can't beat a force vastly larger and stronger than Ukraine.
Europe has large navies that can blockade Russian sea trade. Europe has large air forces that can at least secure air parity, they won't be reduced to sitting around getting glide-bombed to death. They have a massive front with Russia that Russia will struggle to man, stretching from Turkey up to Finland.
Europe produces machine tools domestically. They have Germany for precision engineering. If they're actually at war they'll get serious and start producing ammunition in large quantities. It's really not that hard to produce shells and gun barrels, we know from history that German industry can produce large amounts of munitions, not to mention the other states. They're just trapped in the EU aura of omnishambles and are dragging their feet. Aside from Britain I doubt most of the other NATO countries care that much. This war doesn't really harm their interests enough to make a serious effort to arm Ukraine intensively.
The Russians don't have enough munitions to destroy 2 million professional soldiers, which is what they'd need to do before Europe starts drafting. Europe's sheer size and scale can buy them time to militarize their economy. Russia doesn't seem very good at swift blitzkriegs.
Ukraine has somehow managed to hold this long by throwing warm bodies into the fray, Europe can do that for years and years. Ukraine has no navy and next to no air power, Europe has both.
And this whole discussion is silly because Europe does have nuclear weapons and wouldn't be attacked anyway.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Having allies do the bleeding and suffering while the US takes the spoils of war. That's the tried and tested American strategy for winning serious wars.
Having other countries comply with US sanctions and generally cooperate.
Avoiding unpleasant situations like having strategic resource imports cut off or sudden price hikes, though Trump doesn't seem to care much about this.
Getting to keep overseas bases in foreign countries.
American companies being allowed to get lucrative overseas contracts, merger approvals, market access.
Getting more generous terms in multilateral free trade agreements.
Diplomatic credibility. It helps diplomacy if its generally thought that America won't renege on agreements, being seen as trustworthy (though this has basically vanished).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Isn't it immediately obvious when Sonnet or Opus write something? It's not quite describable in words but you know it when you see it. The diction and tone gives it away.
Even Deepseek has a certain style to it I find. Are the AIs writing the whole thing or are they expanding on user-written text?
In this context I mean European NATO which was also unthreatened by Serbia or the Russian invasion of Georgia. Georgia would be nigh-impossible to defend even with the US involved, just via geography.
I think there are some other similar things in Trump's policies, like asking NATO to pay for its own defense: some of that is just cost-cutting, but some of it is the NATO countries deriding the US for being a warmonger while being completely dependent on its warfighting capability.
There has to be a limit, NATO countries can't be expected to fight and die for countries that aren't even in the alliance as a reasonable part of their defence.
Quite right, the infamous Salo Thread on HIV has extracts from a book where certain gays compared closing the bathhouses they were using to have lights-out orgies to gas chambers.
We can never criticize the genre-unawareness of zombie movie protagonists when stuff like this happened in real life:
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