functor
25d ago
It is a win in a multitude of ways:
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Israel spent far more on this attack than Iran.
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It caused widespread disruption in Israel. Few people slept well last night, flights were cancelled, large numbers of people hid in bunkers and thousands of soldiers participated in the air defence operation.
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Air defence is limited by industrial capacity, not money. The interceptors are complex machines and production is limited. SAM were low priority during the 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan so few SAMs were bought and production capacity was reduced. Now Ukraine is consuming SAMs at a rate several times higher than production and their interception rate is dropping due to shortages of SAMs. Ukraine will also need thousands of SAMs after the war ends to rebuild. Israel is firing SAMs wildly as they are exceptionally casualty averse. Meanwhile China builds missiles are drones at a higher rate than any other country and they are stockpiling their weapons. Depleting SAM inventories is a success in itself.
functor
25d ago
A lot better than a regular call center job but not amazingly well. A lot of 27 year old business majors working 60 hours a week and making 50% more than their class mates doing telemarketing. Telemarketers do really matter. A good salesmen can bring in millions to the firm. Convincing a dentist to move his pension to their fund can generate tens of thousands in revenue over the course of decades. A small difference in conversion rate can have a major impact on the firm's performance. The top people were well paid.
functor
26d ago
Granted, my career in finance was short, and I only worked in tech, but in my experience most finance was underwhelming.
There were a lot of people who more or less had a call center job. Some were doing telemarketing, trying to sell pension-investments. Others were calling people, trying to get them to sign a form promising that they weren't using their pension money to fund ISIS. There was no point to the latter job except ticking a box for the regulators. Lots of people had jobs where their job was to open piles of PDFs, find a key number and insert it into an excel spreadsheet.
With that said, some developers and traders were truly impressive and had almost super human abilities. The issue is that the company was an inverted pyramid. A few people kept the show going, while the majority were support staff. The people who actually did the core work were remarkable people whose jobs won't be automated until we have AGI. The majority were just doing tedious office work in a toxic work environment.
The one thing that keeps demand up for junior employees is that regulation increases the demand for staff. There are fewer and fewer doers and more and more people who have to ensure that the clients aren't on some list of Russian oligarchs or that have to create graphs of carbon emissions in the investment portfolio.
functor
28d ago
If they had dropped more napalm on Iraq, it would have ended like Vietnam. The Soviets killed 10% of Afghanistan's population and did worse than the US. France put two million Algerians in prison camps in the 50s. Turning Iraq into a giant prison wouldn't be sustainable. There are 44.5 million Iraqis. Maintaining a police state for a population that large would be absurdly expensive and have no point. There wouldn't be an actual endgame as the regime would get toppled as soon as the vast police presence was pulled back.
functor
1mo ago
(1) Attracting top talent.
It is a major weakness. People who move are people who are willing to give up on their people, country, friends and family for personal gain. They will leave again if another country offers a better deal. By filling elites with foreigners the US has greatly increased the rift between the elites and the common people. Foreigners in San Fransisco have as much in common with people in Missouri as westerns in Singapore have with Cambodians. The US becomes nothing more than a vehicle for personal ambition among the ruling class. The result is a low trust society with a fractured political system and low social cohesion. France did not benefit by gathering the elite of Europe in Versailles. Even worse, the actual wasp elite will become less American when their colleges and workplaces are full of foreigners.
(2) Economic security.
The US sanctions far more countries than China and places far greater demands on its trading partners. China has no problem selling to the taliban or various African countries. They have little interest in the inner workings of these countries. The US wants to reshape their entire societies to mirror American values. China is far less likely to sanction or even care about what happens in another country. American companies are far more likely to deplattform someone for dissenting values not directly related to the US while China really doesn't care as much about the world outside of China.
(4) Market discipline.
High speed trains don't have to be profitable to make sense. Roads are subsidized by taxes yet they aren't considered unprofitable. Rail way is infrastructure and sewers, railways and roads don't have to operate as a profitable business. Rail requires far less parking space in cities than roads, it produces a fraction of the air pollution, it is far less reliant on fossil fuels and it is faster. High speed rail delivers people straight to city centers and ties in well with other forms of public transit.
(5) Long-term economic trajectory.
China is a manufacturing super power. The US is the country that is heavily reliant on property speculation. The US is running an unsustainable deficit and growing slower than China.
(6) Friends and Allies.
China is the biggest trading partner for most of the world and most of the world has no historic grudge against China. They have never fought a war outside of Asia and have if anything been a big economic benefit to large parts of the world. The US has made a great effort to create grudges against it in the middle east and latin America.
functor
1mo ago
The US is an extremely individualist country and is good at individualist projects which makes the US high in innovation. Meanwhile the US is terrible at large scale collective projects. California high speed rail, Vogtle nuclear power plants and a third of the country doing full lockdown during covid while another third are militantly refusing are examples of Americans being incapable of going with one strategy and ramming it through. Going Belarus and having no lockdowns for anyone, or going China and having lockdowns makes more sense than having half the population locked down while others are having raves.
Manufacturing chips is less about individual genius and more of a grand collective vision. The true innovation and genius is a decade ahead of what can be mass-produced. The timeline from physics genius inventing having a stroke of genius on a black board to manufacturing is long. These genius strokes of ingenuity are difficult to keep secret when they are going to be mass-produced. Taking an idea and building a 20 billion dollar plant requires a Herculean effort of tens of thousands of high skill workers pulling together for a common cause. Building high speed rail is less dependent on the next cool startup and more dependent on society as a whole coming together for a prime directive. China didn't invent the electric car, the mosfet chip, nuclear power or high speed rail, but they excel at scaling production.
Nuclear power is similar. The ideas for fourth gen nuclear power are not new, they are 60 years old. To be leading in nuclear power a country needs legislators, engineers, and technicians who can pull together to make fourth gen nuclear real. They don't need people who can invent novel exotic designs for power plants that won't be built.
As for black people they are useful for the system. A black lesbian woman with a rainbow flag is ideologically loyal. There is no risk that she will turn against the system or be disloyal, she truly believes in the liberal project. White men are a risk group. Chinese and Russian men are the most suspect. When France colonized Vietnam they promoted hmong people to positions of power. The Hmong people have been a minority in a weak position throughout history and had a grudge against the rest of society. They truly benefited from being a part of the French empire. Their loyalty made them good employees. A trustable mediocre employee is better than a disloyal genius.
functor
1mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union%E2%80%93Ukraine_Association_Agreement#Trade
This would have turned Russia's biggest trading partner and a deeply integrated part of the Russian economy into a state with the same rules for trade with Russia as EU countries. Effectively the idea was to bribe Ukraine into chosing the west by promising mountains of tax money from northern Europe in exchange for taking an anti Russian stance.
Several million Poles have moved west to work and western European companies are major employers in Europe. It is effectively a wage dumping operation.
functor
1mo ago
My guess is that Bangalore is one of the world's premier hotspots for intelligence agencies. With a suitcase full of money and a high class escort, men who are 3 out of 10 in looks who make 1200 dollars a month can easily be persuaded to make minor code edits. Especially during the crazy days of 2021 the vetting process for developers was minimal. Infiltrating software companies was easy, simply apply for a job and pass a few leetcode problems and don't come across as insane during the interview.
functor
1mo ago
Russia had no issue with Ukraine doing business with the west. It was the west who demanded that Ukraine cuts ties with Russia. An infeasible demand when they had millions of Russians in the country and deep economic ties to Russia. Western intelligence was deeply involved in the 2014 coup. Then our politicians who freak out over "it is ok to be white" had no problem funding people wearing swastikas who wanted to drive panzers into Russian cities while banning the Russian orthodox church and prohibiting the use of the Russian language.
Continuously shelling the Donbass, Merkel outright admitting that they were disingenuous during negotiations in order to buy time to arm Ukraine and building CIA bases right on Russia's border points to the US provoking a war.
As for Ukraine's economy their GDP increased 600% between the year 2000 and 2013. Since joining Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria in being border states to the US empire, their GDP has collapsed by a third over a decade. The polish option was never an option for Ukraine. Poland's export is labour. Poland's birth rate was substantially higher than Ukraine's and they have far more young people to export. Ukraine is demographically a combination of Japan's birth rate and Venezuela's emigration rate. Exporting labour when the demographics are comparable to the collapse of the Roman empire isn't sustainable.
I am sure there are Ukrainians who are fighting thinking that they can become a truck driver in Germany if they join the west but this doesn't account for the overwhelming political support from the west.
functor
1mo ago
These guys missed that the Afghan military was 225 000 man smaller than they said when they had thousands of people on the ground.
As for Ukraine I think they massively misscalculated it. Their goal was to provoke Russia to invade and then turn Ukraine into Russia's Iraq war. The idea was sanctions against Russia while Russia is forced to integrate Ukraine's basket case pension system into the Russian system while they have to deal with riots, terrorism and stinger missiles shooting down choppers. Ukraine was supposed to be a repeat of the Soviet-Afghan war. Instead, they have to be the logistics and training for a Ukrainian force 4 times the size of the US Marine Corps including their reserves fighting a high intensity war. Russia didn't collapse and if anything their arms industry is producing at a record pace.
functor
1mo ago
Does it matter what programming language a company uses as long as the choice is reasonable?
For example, if a startup making a CRUD app uses JS/NodeJS or TypeScript/NodeJS or Java or Golang? Does it matter if the company uses Vue, React, Svelte or just plain HTML/JS? Obviously it does matter if there are languages specifically used in an industry or if there are special requirements. Python is a terrible choice for an operating system. But if the goal is to make an internal tool for a company, a booking system for a hotel chain, or a billing system does it matter?
Do tech choices impact business success, or are we entertaining ourselves by playing with the next cool tool?
functor
1mo ago
Catholicism can lower birth rates.
Getting married is a big barrier to having children. Men aren't marriageable until they have finished their education, have a job and a place to live. In a country where 29 year old men can't afford their own place and are working as interns few men are going to be married at a fertile age. Unless young women start marrying substantially older men having a high fertility rate becomes unfeasible if marriage is a requirement.
There are really only three solutions:
Lower the social requirements to having kids. Aka single motherhood.
Make becoming a husband more achievable. Aka make it possible for young men to get a stable job and buy a four bedroom home.
Adapt to a middle income country lifestyle. This is common among high fertility immigrants. They can live with six kids in a small apartment, never eat in a restaurant, live off rice and beans and pull teeth out by themselves instead of going to a dentist. Their lifestyle is still materially superior to the vast majority of humans who ever lived. With free school lunches, the children can stuff themselves and get enough calories to cover most of their needs. Humans can survive on a tiny fraction of what middle class people assume to be the limit of survival.
The combination of high requirements and a Catholic view of family means that a sizeable portion of men will never be fathers and those who do will only meet the requirements after age 35.
functor
1mo ago
It is fascinating that not more is done to fix an issue that undermines the confidence in the system.
Republicans should push hard for making IDs a free government service. Giving ID cards to people wouldn't be that expensive, and it would be hard for democrats to oppose a program that would help homeless people get a bank account and integrate into society. Not requiring voter ID is rather unique to the US and a hard position to defend when IDs are required for almost everything else in society.
As for stability having a more unified voting system that makes it harder to cheat would increase stability. Having a percentage of the population believe Bush/Trump/Biden stole the election is a destabalizing force.
functor
1mo ago
The post-Saddam era has thawed those old hatreds, but referring to these nations as having "deep cultural ties" is quite the turn of phrase to use.
Depends on the parts you are talking about. The shia in Iraq hated Saddam and didn't want a war with Iran. Iraq is a highly diverse country, and Iran's ties to the different groups aren't uniform. There are groups that Iran has strong ties to and there are groups that Iran has strong hatred for.
functor
1mo ago
Iran hates Iraq
Iran has good relations with Iraq's shia population and has offered Iraq both help with rebuilding and military aid. Iranians definitely don't get along with Baathist and the Sunnis, but there are strong ties to groups living near Iran. Parts of Iraq are ethnically similar to Iran and the current Iraqi government enjoys good relations with Iran. Regardless, when Iran's neighbour is attacked by an aggressive power that could very well invade Iran it makes sense for Iran to offer support.
there was a revolution. Which is where we are now, with an implacably hostile religious theocracy in charge as a result of our earlier "alliance" with them.
I wonder why the Iranians revolted against a corrupt foreign puppet who siphoned off natural resources to British petroleum. British petroleum was the most profitable British company in the beginning of the 1900s. Iran had been invaded in 1941 and then had a dictator installed in 1953. There was good reason for supporting revolution. Despite sanctions and despite living in a continuous state of semi war Iran has managed to create a stable state that produces few refugees.
You seem to have a thesis ("American imperialism is the root of all evil") to which you are attempting to fit every conflict in the world.
Americans have an exceptional ability to get involved in every corner of the planet. If there is a village in Afghanistan that isn't ruled by them, they will bomb it for 20+ years. The US is in a league of its own when it comes to starting wars and meddling in other countries. Not all problems are caused by the US but the US is a driving force behind instability.
functor
1mo ago
And how do you think running Venezuela into the ground by sanctioning them will impact migrant flows? Migrants flee Venezuela because it is bad, so making it worse should lead to more migrants. Clearly, the US hasn't been able to topple Venezuela's government, and the US has made it worse in Venezuela. In other words, foreign meddling once again lead to a migrant crisis.
The US has a long history of backing coups in Latin America, funding militias and creating banana republics. This has made the region less stable and created more incentives for people to leave.
functor
1mo ago
For example, what is Biden's policy towards Venezuela, a brutal dictatorship which is responsible for a large chunk of the U.S. border crisis,
When Ukraine is everything but democratic because they are in a state of war it is excused. Yet, those under threat from the US are supposed to be completely democratic despite America's long history of sponoring terrorist groups, assassinating leaders and trying to colour revolution countries. If Venezuela didn't hold a tight ship they would have ended up like Iraq, Syria, or Libya. Putting countries in a state of perpetual state of semi war in order to destabilize them increases migration. The US has sanctioned Venezuela, funded an armed coup attempt and continuously worked to undermine the country. As with most of America's foreign policy misadventures it ends up with a massive flood of migrants. The best way to stop the migrant flow is to stop the aggressive posturing. Stealing Venezuelan assets makes the situation in Venezuela worse which encourages emigration.
What about Biden's position on Iran, a country which funds terror throughout the world,
When Ukraine gets invaded we all have to help them. When Iraq gets invaded, Iran is supposedly supposed to just quietly accept it. Why would they? It is a neighbouring country with deep cultural ties to Iran. Of course they are going to help them defend themselves. Iran has given support to groups under direct military threat. Destablizing Iran would mean another giant refugee crisis. Iranians are the most similar people to westerners in that part of the world and if anything they should be our natural allies. Stealing their assets is not only immoral and absurd, it is directly damaging to Europe. When Hillary Clinton was sponsoring Jihadists in Syria which flooded Europe with migrants Iran was helping Syria stay together. We should thank Iran for their support against ISIS.
American policy has been aggressively attacking countries that aren't subservient to the United States and causing continuous blowback.
functor
1mo ago
(as opposed to just wanting them out of Palestine so Israelis can settle there)
They are going somewhere. The best option is if they stay put. Moving millions of arabs around 300 km from the EU is a terrible idea.
Are not Israeli.
Imagine in a Han chinese lobby claimed they were not a Chinese lobby, just ethnic Han who love China.
The reason it is useful to have an outpost in the region is oil, and Iran.
Yet Chinese ships sail past Yemen without getting shot at and China buys middle eastern oil. They didn't have to invade any countries. Iran is in no way a threat and is if anything the group that has been the best at integrating in Europe. They even speak an indoeuropean language. Destabilizing Iran would be an absolute disaster. Our interest is a stable Iran with few migrants and stable exports.
We don't have national interests threatened in or next to Indonesia.
What national interests does the west have around Israel that Israel helps with? Israel provides no oil.
Well, Christians have it better in Israel than in most Arab countries.
Christians are being ethnically cleansed by Israel. Israel has backed jihadists in Syria that were wrecking Christian communities and Israel has had an anti-christian stance in the Armenia/Azerbadjan conflict.
and we cannot escape our interests in the region.
How has Israel promoted stable arab states that produce few migrants and like to do business with the west?
functor
1mo ago
and assuming that Jews are all part of an orchestrated ZOG movement
No, black people overwhelmingly vote democrat. There is no conspiracy, no centralized control and there are individual black people who are right wing. Jews have been overrepresented in promoting their ethnic interest which is in stark contrast to our ethnic interest. When Jared Kushner talks about moving the population of Gaza to Europe that is promoting his ethnic interest against ours.
Israelis generally are not trying to get Western countries to open their borders.
Ben Gvir has been publically promoting ethnic cleansing in Palestine with the goal of bringing in migrants to the rest of the world. ADL and AIPAC have worked hard for open bordres for everyone except Israel along with the pro zionist donor class.
and geopolitically, a local boot to put on Arabs in the region is very useful.
How was the war in Iraq useful? The war in Libya was a terrible example of the west shooting itself in the foot. Afghanistan gave us heroin, migrants and two trillion dollars of debt. We haven't been putting a local boot on Indonesia, the largest muslim country and that hasn't created a problem for us. Israel has not benefited christians in the region, they have not benefited christian Palestinians and they have pushed millions of muslims into Lebanon that used to be more Christian and Greek. Israel is supporting Azerbaijan cleanse Armenians. Meanwhile, Israel has if anything opposed relatively secular nationalists in the middle east and backed islamists who fracture and weaken nearby arab states. This is the polar opposite interest of the rightwing voter.
functor
1mo ago
The refugees generally come from the countries bombed by the US and Israel. Putting maximum pressure sanctions on middle eastern countries, bombing them and supporting groups that destabilize them make it far worse. AIPAC lobbies for war. The US and Israel bomb. IsraAID helps the migrants cross the mediteranean while ADL works to get those who oppose this banned. There is no reason why Syria has to be less stable than jordan or the Gulf states. The wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan have been destructive from a European perspective.
It is a PR nightmare because Israel is killing tens of thousands of people and engaging in an exceptionally brutal form of warefare with western backing. This goes against western tradition of rules of war and much of the non European world watches in horror.
functor
1mo ago
The right's support of Israel never made sense. Israel has created a perpetual refugee crisis on Europe's border, it costs a fortune in foreign aid, and it is a PR nightmare. Meanwhile, ADL, AIPAC and every mainstream jewish groups work against the interests of social conservatism in western countries. Simping for the Israel lobby while the ADL wants to ban conservatives off Twitter is a one way relationship. Israel is oppressing Christians and has sponsored terrorist groups in Syria. Israel works to destabilize the region when the rest of us benefit from it being stable.
There is absolutely no reason to burn political capital defending some of the bloodiest and most brutal wars in recent history in the middle east. Israel can't really provide any tangible benefit to social conservatives in the west. Especially not when Ben Gvir who is Minister of National Security of Israel wants to relocate large numbers of Palestinians in the west.
Had Israel supported similar politics in the west as they promote in their own country, it could have worked. But "nationalism for me, open borders for thee", will upset the left in the west that doesn't like nationalism as well as the right in the west that doesn't like the "open borders for thee"-part.
functor
1mo ago
How much muscle is ideal for a man? At what point does lifting weights become detrimental? What is the ideal proportion of body weight to be able to bench/squat/deadlift/overhead press for a man with healthy bodyfat?
functor
1mo ago
I am seeing a positive trend, open source software is thriving. Java was a programming language owned by a company. Today it is unthinkable that a Java or Matlab like language with terrible license agreements would gain mainstream adoption. With the rise of geopolitical tensions more governments and large corporations are motivated to move toward open source. Unless your country is on superb terms with the US and you don't mind the NSA getting all your data American software is a risk. Developing a completely independent tech stack is hard. More governments and companies will move to linux as it is easier than developing a windows alternative.
The services which can be locked down sit ontop on lower layers of abstraction that are free. Censoring the internet or banning people from running code won't work because Facebook and windows may be blocked but TCP and linux are alternatives.
Israel blundered here. They bombed a consulate, which is going way over the line and looks awful. Israel has once again shown that it fights in a more brutal and barbaric way than other countries. They stepped over the line and Iran managed to make them spend over 500 million on interceptors, shut down their airspace, bombed several of the bases and caused panic throughout their country.
Iran showed that Israeli bombing and chaos in other countries can impact Israel itself. The Israelis stepped out of line and got smacked on the fingers.
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