functor
22d ago
Ukraine's demographic pyramid says no
The future of Ukraine is Somali and Bangladeshi migrants working on farms owned by American financial institutions and managed by HR women educated in the US. Most likely the migrants will actually find their new homeland less enticing to have children in and probably will have fewer than migrants in western countries.
As for Russia the number of Russian men who have served is far below WWII levels. There might be a small effect, but I doubt it will be significant.
functor
11mo ago
There has been a consistent majority against immigration to Sweden for decades yet politicians have pressed on. Even among non SD-voters, the views on immigration tend to be right of the party.
What you are forgetting is the main issue, social cohesion, the sense of beloning and the deep trust that has existed in Swedish society. Swedes in Dubai don't socialize with rich arabs. Most people have friends in their own age group, with similar levels of education etc. People don't want to feel like an alien in their own community. Swedes start moving out of an area as early as 4% of the inhabitants being migrants. Even if the migrants weren't more likely to engage in migrants and even if they paid more in taxes most people don't want to live in a Bangalore even if the people there are smart and productive.
The idea that society is nothing more than a platform for economic exchange completely misses most of human experience and what builds a strong well functioning society. Take the top 10% of ten countries and put them together and you want have a super-country. You will have a corrupt, dysfunctional society.
functor
19d ago
There is a niche for a third tier university to accept autistic weirdos who are kicked out of tier one institutions. This is far from just a wokeness issue, a lot of geniuses are difficult people. By creating a safe space for researchers who don't see what is wrong with asking a woman if she is pregnant or fat and giving them long term research grants, a university can increase the chances of getting groundbreaking research. If a university punches high above its weight class in research, it could compensate for other issues.
It wouldn't surprise me if a university in Asia adopted this strategy. Find deplatformed westerners and build a top tier research facility that rivals famous institutions with several times the budget.
functor
6mo ago
It is typical of any revolution. The idea is that everyone is going to be free and liberated and we will have utopia. The reality is when traditions and norms are removed, we get a massive behavioural sink. People get the freedom to act shortsightedly and selfishly. The response is twofold, one group says the revolution should be rolled back while the other group claims the revolution was sabotaged and the saboteurs need arresting. The problems might be recognized by both sides, the issue is that the solutions are incompatible. The feminists want to have total freedom for women but use state power to ensure that men don't act in self interest. Conservatives want to go back to sexual dynamics run by traditions and norms rather than a one controlled by state power.
functor
9mo ago
I largely agree but, but I am not sure it is a given. There is nothing requiring the state to subsidize single women to the extent it does. Strong independent women who don't need no man do infact need massive bailouts from the tax payer. Single mothers get more government handouts and benefit from a plethora of social programs. If taxes were lowered and schools instead required tuition and if medical care was financed entirely privately single motherhood would become far less attractive. Even in terms of their jobs single women often work in tax payer professions often providing services to themselves. For example a single mother might work as a teacher thereby providing free child care services to other single mothers. Men who don't sleep with these ladies pay.
If there is a way that this unravels, it is the services deteriorating to the point that relying on them in order to be a strong independent women doesn't work.
functor
9mo ago
Yes, the failure of many men was in not screening the mothers of their children for acceptable behaviour before knocking them up.
To be fair though, there aren't exactly as many innocent virgin women without an instagram account as there are men. Men have to compromise on something, looks, virginity, Iq, personality, tattoos, mental health, weight etc. Most people are forced to settle rather than are able to chose whatever they dream of.
I believe that one of the reasons why so many people are single today is because too many people are unattractive. Lots of people are obese, many women have tonnes of bagage, there are men who can't do a single pull up or survive three days without electricity. Partially due to the housing market a lot of young men live with their parents. People are remaining single because they can't find someone decent while they themselves aren't decent.
functor
5mo ago
So if someone defends European/white culture they get banned. Yet, he is upset that people aren't banned when they oppose zionism.
And on that note I think you’d get many people here arguing in that direction if a large and well armed movement of native Americans was kidnapping, raping, killing etc large numbers of whites under, in part, that slogan, and Harvard was tolerating that chant.
If someone wanted to build white settlements on reservations, set up economic blockades around the reservations, kill hundreds of natives every year and then conduct relentless airraids for months on them when they resist they would have been completely wiped out of academia.
functor
5mo ago
Would a native American who said "from the pacific to the Atlantic the Native will be free", be kicked off campus? Would "From Zimbabwe to the sea, South Africa will be free", make them kick you off campus? Funny how these big jewish sponsors were fiercely opposed to any for of white nationalism yet see any opposition to their ethnostate as genocide. Funny how white identities can be completely deconstructed and how thought crimes against diversity get people unpersoned yet the same logic doesn't apply in the other way.
I really see no reason for us goyim to support them at all. For the left, Israel is everything they claim white nationalists to be except worse. You don't see many on the alt right proposing massive airstrikes on the suburbs of Paris. For the right the Zionists is the ADL pushing woke agenda, mass migration into western countries and banning thought crime on twitter. The zionists have managed to alienate almost everyone except themselves and a dying number of evangelicals.
functor
5mo ago
Is anyone else a successful person living like a NEET/incel? I was a nerdy kid growing up. Went to a technical university with few parties and studied Math. Realized that lectures were pretty boring and that there were better ones on youtube, so spent several years in a small apartment in front of a computer. To break the monotony, I made sure to exercise daily and got in great shape. I ended up working at a major tech company and did pretty well but had terrible work life balance. After inheriting a historic apartment in the downtown of a major city, I moved there even though I had no friends there. Three years later I have a good job, I am tall and in great shape and I live for almost free with views of a cathedral.
Yet my life is not really different from that of a NEET. I wake up at 9, sit in front of the computer for most of the day except for exercise and shopping. I have a limited social life and haven't had a girlfriend in years. My life wouldn't be that different if I was living in my parent's basement and gaming instead of working. The only tangible difference would be that I could order fewer cool things online, and I wouldn't have to answer emails.
I can't decide if I am a winning high status male or an incel loser, I seem to be at both ends of the spectrum at once.
functor
6mo ago
The right-wing extremists
Not wanting a 9% of GDP deficit isn't extremism. Pretty much anywhere else in the world including the US up until a few years ago the current US fiscal policy would be called extremism. Not wanting 2 million illegal immigrants flowing into the country a year is apparently extremism.
The GOP promises its voters fiscal responsibility and reduced immigration. The voters get open borders, bailouts for wall street and billions for defence contractors and foreign wars. At some point the base has to demand that the GOP delivers on something for the non oligarchy. Continuing to vote for the GOP because the other side is scary and at some point they may throw you a bone goes against the experience of the last five decades. The GOP base needs to walk out until the GOP starts delivering.
Meta is different products from one large company. X wants an app in which you can send money or chat with your friend all in one app. Facebook and VR-gaming headsets are different products and therefore they have different names. Alphabet is a parent company yet, we have google search, docs, slides, mail etc. Google drive isn't incompatible with search.
WeChat is a model that can work in the same way a larger google ecosystem works. Musk made his initial fortune with online payments and banking. A twitter that allows for small transactions could be immensely useful. With that said keeping the twitter name for it could have been better.
functor
13d ago
The big issue for Ukraine isn't bodies to fill the military it is demographics and qualified people.
Soldiers take almost a year to train and cost a fortune to train. It is far more demanding to train a soldier than most college degrees. Militaries require officers, NCOs and people with specialized skills that require far more training. During peak Ukraine hype we were sold the idea that Ukrainians could be trained to do mechanized assaults in half the time it takes a western soldier to do basic training. The idea that Ukrainians can be trained extremely quickly died with the Ukrainian counter offensive.
Ukraine's doctrine has been to pool its veterans and experienced soldiers into elite brigades used for offensive operations and for stopping Russian attacks, while territorial defence forces man most of the trenches. These elite forces are heavily attrited, have gotten far less rest than they need and are worn out. Replacing them is going to require vast resources. The Ukrainian military is still largely using soviet equipment for which they can't get new parts. Replacing their gear with western equipment requires much more training. The median age in the Ukrainian army is 43 and these men have had hard lives. Even if the war ended half their soldiers would be over 50 within 7 years. Ukraine needs to train hundreds of thousands of men. This is not easy in the slightest and will be an enormous drain on European militaries that are not scaled for mass training of soldiers. Most western European countries only train a few thousand soldiers a year. Even Japan only trains 10 000 per year. Ukraine has over 3200 confirmed dead commissioned officers. The number of seriously wounded is probably 2-3 times that. Replacing those officers is expensive and time consuming.
The other issue is that most men aren't suitable for the military and those who are are often the most economically productive men. Removing them from the workforce hurts and the draft encourages them to leave and never come back.
Russia's war aim is to ensure that Ukraine can never join NATO. They can ensure that by having a war against Ukraine if Ukraine tries to join. Militarily wrecking Ukraine and creating a major incentive for Ukrainians to leave are ways Russia can keep Ukraine militarily weak.
functor
24d 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
3mo ago
Populism vs donor class politics.
A lot of younger Americans think health care is too expensive and has to become substantially cheaper. A lot of young people aren't enthusiastic about forever wars. A lot of young people think housing costs are unsustainable. A lot of young people would be skeptical of NSA spying. These issues cut across the left/right divide. Both a rightwinger and a leftwinger can agree that wall street is becoming parasitical and is sucking money out of the real economy. The boomer elite believe in the system, the younger party members see the system as broken and want to change it.
The situation is a bit like the situation in France in the 1780s. Older members of the elite believed in the system, a lot of young people didn't. That doesn't mean the youngsters agreed at all on how the situation was to be fixed.
functor
8mo ago
How many people in the year 2000 would have supported any of the woke stuff today? Even mass immigration is unpopular and has continuously been so. The left has done an incredible job at pushing the overtone window. They take positions that are unpopular and they fight and fight and fight until they are the status quo. Once things are the status quo people accept them and don't debate them much.
The right is stuck worried about polls and continuously compromises while never launching its own campaigns. The right needs to find new battle grounds, take positions that are impopular and fight to make them status quo. Gay marriage was not popular. Gay marriage lost and lost and lost. The left pushed and pushed and pushed.
The right needs to do the same and find newer more radical positions outside the mainstream and make them the mainstream.
functor
3d ago
Counterpoint: Say something about someone's mom who is from a traditionalist culture and if you survive the reaction you should reevaluate women not being valued. Mothers and matriarchal figures are highly respected.
Inferior is a relative term, it simply depends on what we are measuring. With that said, the standard deviation for achievement is limited for women. Becoming a king is a greater achievement than motherhood. Alexander the Great clearly beat all mother's throughout history in achievement. However, few men live up to that level. The mother's aren't valued aspect is dependent on a culture where people think they can be whatever they want and they are comparing house wife to astronaut. Not average job of a man to mother of 2-3
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
6mo ago
Wages aren't enough to get people to do working class jobs. People will rather make less working as a journalist than work as a plumber. Being a social media strategist or HR will be more attractive than changing diapers and driving trucks. Unless they want to pay wages that are well out of the realm of possibility for content writers it isn't going to work.
The most effective method to get more nurses would be to fire communications majors from government jobs. A sizeable portion of the upper working class and the fallouts of the actual middle class no longer do working class jobs. Instead they get degrees in less demanding subjects from lower tier colleges. The meme of them becoming baristas isn't accurate. Most of them do get office work. However, they would be far more productive welding, building and caring.
functor
6mo ago
The opposition probably has little to do with cold war era politics today and more to do with failed neocon policy. In Europe we have seen the consequences of warmonger in the middle east with large waves of refugees. The enthusiasm for more bombing, fighting and occupying in the middle east is not high when it has been a failure for 22 years with the only tangible result being massive blowback. People don't want 2 million arabs to flee Gaza, people don't want to waste military resources on forever wars and people question the morality of these wars.
Israel has had large immigration from Eastern Europe. Forcefully moving arabs from their home so Belorussian's can build a new house in Palestine is hard to justify. The naval blockade against Gaza, the continuous mistreatment of Palestinians and the creeping expansion of Israel isn't popular.
Furthermore, Israel hasn't really provided any benefit to Europe while continuously causing tremendous headache.
functor
11mo ago
The cynical view is that Conservative legal elites are completely fine with having their embarrassing white nationalist fringe suppressed and don't expect the statute in question to be applied broadly.
Wanting certain ideas in Israel: The only acceptable idea, and opposing them is extremism.
Wanting the same ideas in the US: Embarrassing extremist.
functor
16hr ago
DEI is the natural state of humanity, the 90s was an extreme outlier. Throughout history humans have always been tribal and worked for their group interests. A group of people working as a group will easily outcompete individuals. Tribes, clans, nations etc exist for a reason. The US is well over 400 years old, not ignoring the first half and ethnic interests were a central part of conflicts throughout nearly all of that. The 90s were an outlier, not the norm even in the US. Go to other parts of the world and democracy simply doesn't work since people vote for their ethnic candidate.
The 90s required the US to be so white enough for white culture to be the norm. The whiteness was implicit and black people were seen as white people with brown skin. This level of implicit whiteness no longer exists.
The 90s came after decades of rising living standards and a high point of the American empire. There was less competitiveness.
The cat is out of the bag and lots of groups have realized that their lobbying gives results. Good luck convincing black people to adopt meritocracy and opposing government transfers of wealth from haves to have nots. If fighting for your group delivers big results, people will do it. Historically people have been more than willing to die for it so expect people to continue to do so.
functor
2mo ago
Egypt has no reason whatsoever in aiding Israels ethnic cleansing of Palestine by helping Israel move millions of Palestinians into Egypt.
functor
8mo ago
Fake meat products are a bad idea since they will at best fall in the uncanny valley. They are never going to produce real dairy or meat from plants in a factory.
The vegan alternatives producers should stop emulating meat and instead focus on making something that fills the same role. Tasty on the BBQ would be better than almost meat. The goal shouldn't be to approach dairy or meat but instead create a product that fills the same niche. Instead of trying to recreate milk from a cow create an excellent liquid to have in coffee. It doesn't have to be white or resemble milk, it just needs to improve coffee.
functor
9mo ago
The obvious response should be to point out that the mainstream parties have done far worse. Invading Afghanistan killed 200 000 people are tenfolded their heroin production. Two decades of bombing a country can't remotely compare to edgy forum posting. Nationalists in western countries are too quick to accept being the boogeyman when the mainstream parties have flooded Syria with support for jihadists, destroyed Libya for decades to come, invaded Iraq twice, starved the population of Iraq and blocked medicines to Iran during a pandemic. The mainstream parties tears for the migrants seem hollow when the migrants are fleeing their bomb wars.
Compare pointing finger guns on a train and sending soldiers to their home country with the rules of engagement that every boy above the age of 16 will be counted as a combatant.
Why don't politicians who caused a week of rioting in France have to appologize? When will the politicians that caused dozens of terrorist attacks with hundreds of dead have to appologize? When will the politicians whose policies led to a massive increase in rapes appologize? When will they appologize to all the people who have effectively been ethnically cleansed by being forced to participate in white flight due to immigration policies that make life intolerable in their neighborhood.
The true Finns should never appologize, never cede the moral high ground and make it clear which side they percieve as the evil ones.
The neocon hype cycle:
A new Hitler is launched. Saddam, Osama, Gadaffi, Putin, Ho Chi Minh is this evil person motivated by evil who wants to destroy the world because it is evil! We have to act now before the new cartoon villain kills us all! Nobody wants to talk about the lead up to the conflicts and the very real grievances the next Hitler has. His motivations are by default nothing but his cartoonish evil and his arguments don't have to be discussed.
Freedom fries and hype. We will take Berlin next week! Mission accomplished! People are waving their flags and hyping up the military operation that is quickly and surgically remove the new Hitler thanks to the new wunderwaffen. This war isn't like all the previous disasters, we are going to win cheap and fast!
A plan designed by politicians rather than generals is launched. We aren't actually going to have a war time economy and do what it takes to win the war in Ukraine. We weren't actually going to build a military base in every valley in Afghanistan, we weren't actually going to nation build Libya. We want the cheap discount option that is easy to swallow. Ukrainian soldiers can be trained in six weeks. Not because they can learn a year's worth of material in six weeks but because it is a nicer option than the alternative.
People start acting for the sake of acting. There is no goal in Afghanistan, nobody knows what winning looks like. But we have some spare stuff lying around so we can donate that to the Afghan national army. Do they need it? Do theyhave a plan for how it is going to be used? What will eventually replace it? Who cares, people who ask those questions are terrorist lovers listening to the Dixie Chicks.
The misadventure goes way over budget, hundreds of thousands of people die and we get flooded with migrants. Now people don't want to talk about it anymore.
Years pass and people start denying that they ever supported that war. However, have you heard of the next Hitler! They may have lied about every previous war, but this new Hitler they are being completely honest about. We have to kill him, the media that told us Iraq has WMDs and the Afghan army has 300 000 soldiers says this guy eats babies!
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