functor
26d ago
China is the largest trading partner to most countries in the middle east. They managed to do this and have large numbers of Chinese people working in the middle east by not wasting trillions enraging the middle east by bombing them. Israel supported jihadists in Syria, Europe got culturally enriched and the same terror groups attacked Europe.
The best thing the US could do to strengthen its position in the middle east would be to pull out all troops.
functor
1mo ago
Could AI be the next big thing without impacting the economy and labour market?
Computers revolutionized the construction industry. CAD software makes it far easier to draw buildings and share the drawings. Phones makes communications vastly easier. Instead of a worker getting stuck or having to physically find someone they can make a video call. Manuals and documents are freely available online. Online shopping makes order parts cheaper and easier while allowing builders to press prices. Accounting, scheduling, recruiting sales and other supporting activities are easier with computers. Even on the construction site computers control machines. A modern truck is full of software.
Yet the productivity in the construction industry has flat lined and is if anything declining. Land prices can take some blame but renovating a building has not become cheaper.
Could we see similar effects with AI? A company in 2035 has completely automated customer service, AI drafts contracts, does sales and codes. We may have self driving cars and humanoid robots. Yet we might see barely 2% GDP growth and no real boom in productivity. Why has the tech sector revolutionized work without dramatical increases in productivity and can the results be better in the coming 20 years?
functor
3mo ago
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Maga is a coalition of various groups Trump has managed to get onboard by promising them various things. He has an issue that he has Tulsi Gabbard, America first nationalists and voters who have nothing to gain from warmongering in the middle east in the same coalition as Israel-first jews. They are at odds with each other.
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Bombing countries to fight insurgencies doesn't work. Laos was bombed harder than any country in WWII with little effect. Afghanistan was bombed relentlessly for 20 years with US troops on the ground coordinating the fire. Bombing Yemen is not going to be more effective than bombing the taliban was.
functor
11mo ago
Often the reasoning becomes circular. Israel helps the US against US enemies. The enemies are enemies due to conflicts caused by Israel.
A good alternative approach is that of China. They buy oil from Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis. No trillion dollar wars and yet they have consistently gotten their oil. They even managed to get Iran and Saudi to join BRICS together.
functor
1mo ago
Virtues are dead so there is no point in up holding them. In Rome during Caesar's time the system was broken and people knew it. The same is true in modern day America.
When the system is broken and dysfunctional you need someone who doesn't care about the rules but instead can fix things. Trump and Caesar are both less focused on formalities and more focused and doing. The current system consists of people like the people in Versailles who were more concerned with trivialities at dinner parties than the national budget.
Trump's biggest issue is that he is far older than Caesar was when Caesar was in power and the US has far more institutional inertia than Rome had. Trump can't get nearly as much done even if he blatantly disregards the rules.
functor
3mo ago
There are plenty of benefits.
Makes domestic manufacturing more competitive. The US economy can't be based on finance and a tech. Wall street and silicon valley simply don't employee anywhere near enough workers to satisfy a country with 340 million people. Having a few people make vast fortunes in the medical industry and insurance while a hundred million people sell services won't be sustainable. The US has rising income inequality and the fracture between wall street and average Joe has become way too large. If pollution happened in the same area as the consumers live we would have a far greener world.
Outsourcing increased the distance between owners and workers. American oligarchs have no connection to their workers in Vietnam. If they lived in the same city the connection would be a lot stronger. Boeing workers working at the same complex as the bosses in Seattle will be treated better than workers in Mexico.
Sovereignty: Being dependent on long international supply chains is a major risk. The world risks a bronze age style collapse if global supply chains break down. Imagine a war in Taiwan, a serious pandemic, a tactical nuclear war or a meteor shutting down a few key factories. It could upend our entire civilization. We could quickly find out that farms are dependent on some supply chain for some component we never have heard of but keeps us all fed and this factory has been knocked out. The number of suppliers that supply key components to medical care, the electrical grid, oil and similar is shockingly small. Many companies are dependent on numerous supply chains and if one of them broke down it could cause cascading effects. It may be more efficient to have 1-4 global suppliers of key components than to have dozens. However, it is far more anti fragile.
functor
3mo ago
Why is LGBTQ so important for liberals in terms of foreign policy?
For example, when debating Russia, arguments often amount to Russia is evil because they aren't onboard with pride. Russia isn't putting LGBTQAASASFDSFDSFDSFDSFSD people in concentration camps, they simply seem not to have pride flags while having a don't ask don't tell attitude. Why does that infuriate liberals that much?
Countries in the middle east can engage in all sorts of questionable behaviour but, often it is a lack of LGBTQ flags that infuriates the left. Again, they aren't mass-executing LGBTQ people or having concentrations camps, they simply don't celebrate it or want it rubbed in people's faces.
It seems like existence of pride parades seems to be a key benchmark for judging the moral virtue of a country. Why is this benchmark so central?
functor
7mo ago
Fracking is putting the US in a screwed position in terms of power generation. Fracking produces a lot of cheap gas which outcompetes most other electricity production. However, it is finite. Fracking will essentially deliver 30 years of super cheap power and then another decade or two of cheaper power. It is going to leave a large void behind it. Texas needs to start planning for a post fracking future and considering the sorry state of western nuclear manufacturing this is going to take time.
functor
13hr ago
Beards being leftists are hardly a universal rule. European nobility and royalty have historically often been bearded. Beards are masculine.
What is dying is the 80s Reagan conservatism/enterprise institute style conservatism. The strange mix of trying to cosplay southern baptist and business elite at the same time isn't working anymore. The conservative INC aesthetic won't work forever and will have to change. Mitt Romney and JD Vance have a larger age gap than most men have between them and their fathers. Most guys aren't looking and dressing like their dad.
The left transformed in less than 50 years from Russian revolution to hippy movement. It shouldn't be shocking that the right can morph in a similar timespan.
functor
16d ago
They can close it the way Yemen closed the red sea. Tankers are massive, slow moving ships that are easy targets for drones and missiles. They have over 1500 km of mountainous coastline with tankers sailing in proximity to their shores.
The US failed to win against Yemen in a year and a half. This war will be much, much harder.
functor
21d ago
This was the same method used to destroy Libya. The US sanctioned them, bombed them to pieces and financed various jihadist groups and slowly destroyed the country. The US failed at nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan and moved on to nation destruction. There was no attempt to build a liberal Syria, there was instead a project to simply destroy Syria. There has been no attempt to fix Yemen, the goal is simply to turn Yemen into a shattered wreck with no capacity to do anything.
The US empire has gone from trying to control the world to simply trying to smash anything that challenges it with not much more justification than might is right.
functor
3mo ago
I disagree with the notion that the dissident right has a weak presence on tiktok. I am seeing lots of dissident right content on tiktok and the comment sections are on fire. Tiktok has more freedom of speech than most big tech platforms and has an algorithm that makes it a lot more likely for niche content to go viral. There is a reason why tiktok is overrepresented in producing memes and trends. Tiktok is more interconnected and users are less siloed into tiny communities than most other platforms.
The group that is missing on tiktok isn't dissidents, it is the mainstream republicans, never Trumpers and American enterprise institute types. These groups need to seriously take a look in the mirror and have a long think about why their message has a non existent resonance with tiktokers. Just because Dick Cheney wears a suit doesn't make him respectable.
functor
3mo ago
In other words lets defend the interests of AIPAC and the ADL while allowing free speech for attacking white people. Funny how cancel culture was so problematic for republicans until it went against AIPAC interests.
functor
5mo ago
14 deaths in Northern Ireland becomes so famous people know the story 53 years later. Israel kills hundreds of people a year during a peaceful year and tens of thousands during the war. The Gazan war had as many dead in a month as the troubles had in 30 years. It was about 360x more bloody.
functor
6mo ago
They also seem to forget that the women would have been pregnant a large portion of the time.
Also performance enhancing drugs have made many of the female pro athletes barely female.
functor
6mo ago
Catholicism has historically been pro death penalty and catholic societies have had rates of death penalty far higher than any society today. The issue isn't "catholic stuff", the issue is that the pope is barely catholic.
functor
6mo ago
Another and often ignored factor is how sedentary american culture is. Driving is ubiquitous with more people commuting by bicycle in Copenhagen than in all of the US. American grocery stores are surrounded by a sea of parking while in the rest of the world most people would walk to their local store. One thing that struck me in the US was how common escalators are. Lawn mowers nearly always have an engine in the US and are often ones the user sits on. In other places a person mowing grass is more likely to walk. Even fit Americans don't move that much. Fit Americans tend to be sedentary nearly all the time except for four hours a week of vigorous fitness. Gym culture is bigger in the US than in much of Europe. What is missing is movement in every day life.
functor
7mo ago
Gas can be build that fast. However, that requires cheap gas. Scaling nuclear is going to take more than a decade.
functor
9mo ago
I find it bewildering that they call it a conspiracy. Is Antonio Gramscii a conspiracy?
Is critical race theory supposed to be a conspiracy?
The believers in the conspiracy have even made a long wiki page about cultural marxism in the soviet union.
The left is deeply involved in cultural issues so calling it a conspiracy is just the least sensible way of waving it off. They can't actually debate the issue so they have to use slander. Left wing movements use gossip, shaming and rallying to much higher degrees than right wing movements.
functor
19d ago
These politicians hardly act as devout christians who believe every word of the bible. They are paid by AIPAC and are terrified of Mossad and jewish influence in the media.
functor
21d ago
The differnece between the anglosphere and continental Europe is the first past the post system.
In Germany there are young leftists and rightists. Old right leaning people vote CDU, young right leaning people vote AfD. Old leftists vote social democrat, young leftists vote Green. The first past the post system makes it hard for new parties to form and makes it hard to replace the local established politician. The issue is that boomers and their establishment policies are not exciting young people anywhere. Keir Starmer and whoever is leading the Tories this week don't appeal to the young.
For a system to last young people have to be able out maneuver the old. First past the post makes this hard.
functor
2mo ago
The ADL and AIPAC, Israel's behaviour, the Syrian war, etc haven't exactly helped. Jews reached a feeling invincibility, and got arrogant, and entitled. The jewish community should reflect upon their own behaviour and why they consistently end up in conflict with everyone around them. Instead they promote conflict because an external enemy is required to keep the jewish community together.
functor
4mo ago
Compare how the Chinese have played things compared to the neo-cons.
During the cold war Sino-Russian relations were tense and the countries had sizeable portions of the militaries on each other's borders. Russia pancaked itself during the 90s and instead of abusing Russia the Chinese were rather generous. Russia had treated China poorly and the Chinese responded by being respectful. Today China has almost no troops along the Russian border and they can buy the natural resources between Turkey and Alaska, or Norway and North Korea at a discount.
Meanwhile the west has embargoed it self from one of the largest resource producers in the world and has to sustain a military 25% of the size of the US military fighting a high intensity war against Russia while having to maintain a separate military force capable of defeating Russia on Russia's northern flank. Russia has become an endless black hole for western military resources that is going to cost mountains of equipment and manpower for decades. China isn't paying this incompentence tax.
The US spent two trillion playing 8D chess defending its strategic resources in Iraq. The Chinese bought oil fututures and let the Iraqis buy infrastructure from China with the money. Today the Chinese have stronger ties to Iraq than the US has with a percent of the budget. The US is spending far more in the middle east than China, with dubious results. The US strategy of dominating the world through military means simply doesn't work. The best strategy for the US is to do what China does.
The establishment lied wildly about Vietnam. The lies about Iraq were next level inventing WMD in Iraq. They lied about Jessica Lynch, abu ghraib, the UN weapons inspectors and long list of other things.
In Afghanistan they claimed that the 120 000 000 000 dollars wasted on the Afghan national army created an army of 300 000. After a decade of claiming this they changed the narrative in a week admitting that they had basically fabricated this military. Unfortunately, they hadn't fabricated all the spent money.
The Ukraine war has to be the war in modern history with the least investigative journalism. There is basically only narrative and press releases from think tanks being published in the media. In 2003 Bagdhad Bob was interviewed on American TV. In this war, nobody would ever dream of bringing a Russian general on TV for an interview.
It is going to be interesting to see the reaction when the lies start falling apart and the true believers find out their war was roughly as fake all the previous ones.
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