sohois
11mo ago
The UK general election has largely completed
Labour wins, Sir Keir Starmer is the new British PM
Results as of 8am, 6 seats undeclared:
LAB: 410, CON: 119, Lib Dem: 71, SNP: 9, Reform: 4, Green: 4, Plaid Cymru: 4, Independents: 5
I've left off Northern Irish parties
In many ways, there are few surprises, with Labour taking a hefty majority as everyone predicted and the Tories suffering their worst result in seat count in their history. There are a few bigger themes:
Labour wins by default
Despite their hefty seat count, Labour's share of the vote amounted to only 34%. To put that into perspective, Corbyn's (one of the independent seats, FYI) 2019 campaign picked up 32% of the vote. Up against one of the least popular Tory governments in history, Starmer barely managed to beat the divisive former leader. Predictions of 40% vote shares and a complete Tory wipeout didn't come to pass.
A poll taken just a few days before the vote highlights the problem for Labour: the main reason for people to vote for them was to get rid of the Tories. There was no enthusiasm for Starmer or his policies. They now have a hefty majority and 5 years in which to change that, but there's no sign in any of their policies that they will actually be radical enough, nor do they have much freedom to move. The Tories left behind a historically high tax take while the level of government services was only seen to decline. Raising taxes further is never a popular move, but without more cash Labour's traditional approach of pumping money into the NHS or education has no possibility. Starmer could be bold on areas related to productivity, housing, pensions, or immigration, but there's just zero sign he'll do so. Labour's vote is brittle and the remaining Tories are already looking to 2029 as a good chance to regain power.
Zero Seats fails to materialize
On the Tory side, things are looking pretty good. Which is to say, it's a terrible result for them but far less damaging than some polls indicated. Talks of not even being the official opposition or being taken over by Reform look like pure fantasy now. It's a blow for right wingers, who had hoped to expel the more moderate elements, and there's a good chance the next leader will be another neoliberal.
4 seats for Reform is not a terrible result under First Past the Post, but with initial exit polls giving them as many as 13 it will look disappointing in the morning light. Farage is in parliament at the 7th time of asking, but the rules of the commons can be quite effective at muzzling troublesome voices - if you don't get called upon by the speaker, then you cannot participate unless you are the official opposition.
FPTP looks increasingly ill-suited
Reform's 4 seats came from 14% of the vote. This is double the vote share of the Green's but both ended with the same number of seats. The Lib Dems received only 12% but ended with 65 more seats than either. The major parties had little enthusiasm but still managed to shut out the smaller guys, but the distribution of seats looks increasingly ridiculous as more third parties start to gather support.
With the left expelled from Labour and the Tory party avoiding a Reform merge, the hope now for left and right wingers is that 2029 might spell the end for FPTP in a hung parliament situation.
Scottish nationalism crumbles, but rises for Welsh and Irish republicans
The best result of the night surely goes to Scotland, who were able to mostly expel the utterly atrocious SNP. For a long time, the Scottish nationalists coasted along on independence sentiment and being "not the Tories". This masked the fact that on practically every devolved measure, they underperformed even the disastrous UK government. Labour's weakness does offer them a glimmer of hope, but with independence sidelined it's hard to see a way back to their previous strengths for a generation.
Wales saw the reverse, with their nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, gaining 2 more seats. Welsh nationalism and independence are far less popular than the Scottish varieties ever were, but the SNP came to the fore by slowly building up support, and perhaps the same will work for Plaid?
Northern Ireland remains a basket case. The republican party, Sinn Fein, has become the largest in their government, but not through gaining seats. Instead the main unionist party, the DUP, lost seats to other challengers. You'll probably see some xitter users proclaiming that results show a rise in republicanism due to Sinn Fein being the largest party, but the reality is a lot of the results appear to be down to petty squabbles related to power sharing and other administration-related issues.
All that's left now is to see what Labour can do. Given the US and right wing slants of the Motte, I doubt we have more than 1 or 2 Labour voters here, but if any are out there it will be interesting to hear their thoughts
sohois
1yr ago
Has there been a UK election post yet? I suppose there's not much room for culture war when all the main parties are slightly different flavours of neoliberal Blairites, but still
The News
Rishi Sunak, leader of the Conservatives, announced a general election a few weeks ago, to take place on July 4th. A slightly odd date for a party with plenty of nationalist sentiment, but probably meaningless. The Tories were coming to the end of their maximum term, so an election was guaranteed within the year, but this still came as a surprise to most. Quite simply, Sunak's Tories are on a path to certain doom electorally, and most expected them to cling on to power until the bitter end. Speculation was that Sunak was seeking to take advantage of some rare positive economic news, with others suggesting he wanted to jump before he was pushed out by his own party. Who knows? The end result is Britain is going to the polls.
The Candidates
And when I say the candidates, I mean the important ones, not the Lib Dems or the Greens.
Sunak and the Tories:
The right-wing conservative party has been in power for 14 years at this point, moving through Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak as leaders. And what do they have to show for it? An economy in ruins. Legal immigration at record levels, and no control over illegal channel crossings. Total breakdown of law and order, while police most concern themselves with mean tweets. Other public services mostly in shambles, chronically underfunded despite the highest tax burden in generations. Housing is completely unaffordable. Planning is a disaster and every attempt at big infrastructure has been a complete fiasco. Internally, the party has been beset by scandal after scandal.
In short, not good. Polls put the Tories on course for their worst result ever. Their natural right wing support base is enthusiastically lining up behind "Zero Seats" hoping for even greater destruction of the main right wing party.
Sunak himself is fairly hopeless as leader, with little sign of even slight recovery. He's a charisma vacuum, especially compared to Boris Johnson, already lost to the dumbest woman alive in Truss, and can't even deliver on policy. At least, that's how his detractors would put it. For me, I think analysis is a bit harsh; he reminds me of John Major. Boring, but competent enough, he's mostly brought down by his own party's failings, by time, and by external events. He probably should never have been made PM and stuck to being a perfectly fine cabinet minister, but once Johnson imploded he was still the best available.
Starmer and Labour
Kier Starmer has led the working class, left-wing labour party since 2020 when they finally dumped the useless Jeremy Corbyn. After 5 years of unpopular and often deranged far left management, Starmer moved Labour back towards the centre and now looks certain to be the next British leader, likely with an unassailable majority.
Does this mean that Starmer is the greatest political prodigy since Blair? Probably not. If anything, I'd argue the closest parallel to Starmer is none other than Rishi Sunak. Both are dull, but have an air of competence. Both are neoliberal centrists. And both came to power in largely the same way - keeping their heads in difficult positions while everyone around lost theirs. Sunak was the only sane voice during the disastrous lockdowns. For Starmer, it was brexit that propelled him forwards. But apart from that, neither really has anything to offer.
The Labour party itself remains an uneasy alliance between Corbynite communists and Blairite centrists, though Starmer has at least wrested control away from the Corbyinistas. While things are going well, there are few problems, but even in this procession of an election the party is at risk of derailment by the likes of Diane Abbott.
Nigel Farage
The biggest development in the race so far has been the return of Farage to frontline politics. He had attached himself to the Trump campaign, seemingly abandoning his old party Reform to irrelevance. However, the news of Trump's conviction must have had an impact on him, as he very quickly made his announcement of returning to lead Reform and campaigning for a seat in Clacton, a former UKIP stronghold. Farage's opportunism doesn't reflect particularly well on him, but right-wing supporters probably don't care; he is the only real hope they have.
Reform itself doesn't really matter. The party was a vehicle for Farage to push brexit through, and once he left they became a joke. Should Farage succeed in gathering a handful of seats for them, he'll probably use it as a springboard to take over the Tory party, rather than pushing Reform.
The Issues
Just read any post about Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and in many cases the US. Yes, the UK suffers all the familiar problems: housing, productivity, immigration, infrastructure, etc. But let's go through them anyway.
- The economy
Once the world's richest nation now looks set to be overtaken by Poland within the decade, at least on a per capita basis. There has always been a lot of focus on why Britain seems to struggle so much since the financial crisis - see MR, for example - but the end result is a nation is increasingly poor, unable to fund key services and with little sign of any wage growth or wealth generation amongst the general populace. How much of this is the Tories fault? A fair amount, sure, particularly after the government shot both feet off with lockdowns, but a lot is out of their control. Still, the general public won't care.
- Housing
Compounding the problem of a weak economy is our old friend unaffordable housing. A bonkers planning system has combined with mass immigration to leave houses in major cities unaffordable for middle class workers, while London is increasingly the playground of the global super rich. And like most nations, the political blob refuses to do anything lest they risk the wrath of the pensioner vote.
- Immigration
Brexit, more than anything, can be understood as a protest vote against high levels of immigration, not just from the EU. After Johnson completed Britain's exit in 2019, the conservative government then decided to pump up immigration to record levels for no apparent reason. As with Canada, the government appears addicted to cheap labour and international students, even as the apparent economic benefits disappear. Left wing Labour is pushing the right wing Tories on their unacceptably high levels of immigration; the Tories respond by promising, yet again, that they will do something. Few believe them this time.
- Crime
One of Blair's most remembered soundbites is "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". Starmer would probably do well to imitate him. A feeling of lawlessness pervades Britain's cities, and the average Brit will tell you that petty crime has become basically legal such is the uselessness of the police force. It's not clear what the cause is - too many third-world migrants? Breakdown of trust? Lack of frontline police? Mismanagement of the police force? Overflowing prisons? General economic trouble? - but it's fair to say a return to more active policing and harsher sentencing would be a big vote winner.
- The NHS
The beloved national health service is on its knees. Claims of austerity abound, but the NHS was always protected by the Tories and has more money than ever. The effect of lockdowns is still being felt, and an aging society will demand more and more, but these don't fully explain what has gone wrong. Labour prescripts yet more government funding. A bigger impact will probably come from the unions suddenly deciding they don't need to strike anymore.
- Culture
Not really an issue. Britain does not have a big Schelling point for culture war like abortion rights in the US. People just don't care that much about trans rights or LGBT. The black population is simply too small for racial animus to play much of a part, outside of the dreams of Guardian journalists. Certainly, a growing Muslim block is troubling Labour, who have remained committed to Israel so far, but it's not going to make a difference here.
Anyway, last night saw the first TV debate between Sunak and Starmer. I didn't watch it, but it seems that Sunak performed well. I predict it won't make any difference to the final result. Labour will seize power with a huge majority, and then do pretty much nothing to address the biggest issues plaguing the UK.
sohois
6mo ago
Maybe you have reversed causality here? H1bs can be kept on payroll without having to offer them anything more, you can keep salaries down with no complaints. Americans who learn new skills and gain more experience want to increase their earnings, but companies don't invest in wage growth so people have learned you need to jump ship regularly to keep earning. This is not just an American software thing either, across the Western world salaried employees seem to have learned the lesson that you need to change jobs every 2-4 years to actually make serious progress in earnings
sohois
7mo ago
I think negative sentiment towards Indians can be narrowed down to one dominant factor: the English language.
Indians are, what, 1 in 6 people on the planet? In the past this number didn't mean much as the vast majority rarely leave their home country, but the internet and outsourcing means you have a much greater chance to encounter Indians. The thing is, India's cultural issues and level of social niceties are no worse than any other developing nation. China has many of the same problems, with a vast underclass of people that have awful hygiene and manners, a massive scam industry, nepotism and dishonesty, and even the "incel" characteristics that are ascribed to indians can be found in many Chinese men.
But people will very rarely encounter Chinese people because they don't speak English. There are no Chinese call centres, and while there are plenty of English language Chinese scammers you are still much more likely to get a call from an Indian. And on the internet, the Chinese are essentially banned from many of the most popular Western sites, while Indians will likely soon become the majority on places like facebook, reddit, youtube, and tiktok. The majority of the time an average Westerner is encountering someone from China will be Chinese tourists, and they have a godawful reputation.
sohois
11mo ago
A similar change has happened to a quite different, but also alike subreddit, /r/simpsonsshitposting. It's not a remotely serious sub, as the name implies, but it is very close in size to /r/npr and has only very recently undergone a transformation into endless US democrat posting. Previously a subreddit where users would poorly smash together different Simpsons scenes, with the occasional current events or political post, in the past month 22 of the top 25 posts are explicitly political. 2 are current events. Just 1 is an actual Simpsons shitpost in the traditional style.
One thing we can rule out with Simpsonsshitposting is bots; unlike NPR, you can't just post links to stories and while there are repost bots the aren't creating new political shitposts. Some of the top recent posts are very much the "arduous journey to read this left wing meme" wall of text (see https://reddit.com/gallery/1dyj5zb, https://reddit.com/gallery/1e3jkeb), which don't really lend themselves to astroturfing either. Why bother typing all that out when you can just post Stampy walking through the Republican convention? Two posters have multiple top posts in the past month, and both look relatively normal. Spectreagent7000 and first level ranger have regular posts in both SS and other subreddits, plenty unrelated to politics.
This suggests to me that either your 2nd or 3rd theories are correct, although there is one another factor you didn't consider: reddit karma. Every large subreddit becomes garbage because of the way reddit is designed, and because people just want easy upvotes. Creating a real simpsonsshitpost is not a huge challenge but it takes a modicum of wit and a great memory for the show. In return you're heavily limiting your audience to others who really know the Simpsons. The US political shitposts above do require more effort, but they don't take any brainpower. You just slap some standard talking points on Frinkiac and reap your reward, which, it is clear, is a much larger audience, with more upvotes and comments. Now that Simpsonsshitposting and NPR are large enough to get onto /r/all through subscriber numbers, the political karma farmers move in.
sohois
2yr ago
The responses below have already explained the scandals that brought Boris down, but another point is that Boris failed to get any credit in the bank; after the Brexit deal, his government basically achieved nothing despite a large majority.
There were plenty of external factors that Boris had no control over, for which he was pretty unlucky. Covid, of course. Even if Boris had stuck to the original plan of "let it rip" and herd immunity, the rest of the world is still going to lockdown, destroying supply chains and driving inflationary forces. British borrowing would be in a better place at least, but that wouldn't stave off inflation and a recession.
The invasion of Ukraine is probably still happening. In fact the response to this was one of Boris's few successes, so if it didn't happen he wouldn't be better off. And even if he had immediately commissioned a dozen nuclear power plants after the GE, there is nothing he could have done about the energy crisis which engulfed Europe, due to the blunders of Germany.
But there is plenty he could have done. Immigration was a major driver of Brexit, with voters eager for reductions to both legal and illegal migration. Yet the Tories responded to heavy reductions in EU immigration by massively expanding visa numbers to other nations. And they have seemingly done nothing for waves of English channel crossings that have occupied papers day after day.
Another big promise was "leveling up", spreading economic benefits to left-behind areas of the country that had switched to the Tories and reducing the dependence on London. Other than the continued lumbering forward of the HS2 rail line, I can't recall a single policy that might have done anything about this.
sohois
1yr ago
One aspect worth considering is the extent to which Chinese companies want to compete in the US (and other Western car markets).
And by "compete" I mean really go for the jugular and sell their 10k electric car for 10k (+ the extra you probably have to pay to dealers and the like compared to third-world markets).
I buy a lot of Chinese tech, because their extremely lax attitude towards copyright means you'll generally get all the bells and whistles of the good Western stuff but at a fraction of the cost. Except that this is only true if you buy in China or ship through AliExpress. As soon as Chinese manufacturers enter into Western markets directly, they immediately slap a big premium onto their products, far more than could be explained by local regulation or supply chain costs. BYD have started selling cars in Europe, and when I saw I immediately went to their website to see how competitive their cars would be... and the prices aren't competitive at all, coming in 2-3x the local Chinese price and offering little over Western EV prices.
As long as Chinese producers see the West as just a cash cow rather than a market to really dominate, Western manufacturers will be ok.
sohois
3mo ago
I'm sure posters here could provide a reasonable steelman for Trump's position if asked, but forget about providing arguments for a second: are there any Trump supporters here who genuinely believe this is a good set of policies, or even a not-disastrous set of policies?
I can't imagine this will be the final thing to break support for Maga types, but I would give strong odds that this goes down as a major black mark on Trump's eventual record, and a potential torpedo for any future Maga candidates
sohois
8mo ago
Given Scott's endorsement in 2016, I'm not at all surprised he's not changed his mind this time around.
In 2016, you could argue for "high variance". There were plenty of supporters who believed that Trump would bring his business acumen to bear to sweep away inefficiency and to make deals, or that he would successfully take on the establishment and "drain the swamp". There was a positive case to make for him.
But this didn't happen. In his 4 years, Trump was a pretty generic Republican, average to below-average in most respects. He failed to achieve most of his policy goals and was not a dealmaker or businessman in office. Perhaps the only area you might praise his achievements was in foreign policy, but even those successes look very short lived. Then right at the end, he veered towards the down part of the high variance argument.
It seems like now the overwhelming arguments for Trump are all "He's not Harris" or "He's not the democrats". For Scott whose policy positions are probably closer to the democrats, this is not going to be particularly convincing, as he lays out.
sohois
11mo ago
Just be tough and Nayib Bukele
In a recent article and highlights post, Scott Alexander argued against the narrative that being tougher on a difficult social problem like homelessness was an effective way to solve them, suggesting that the "tough" argument relied on a simplistic view of the problem and failed to address the intricacies that were necessary to actually make a tough approach work.
In responses on the post and in discussion here, some toughness proponents argued that a sufficiently tough approach, i.e. abandoning due process and many civil liberties, could overcome the different barriers to solving homelessness, but western societies are simply unable to proceed with such a radical policy.
One of the strongest points of evidence in favour of "radical toughness" is El Salvador. Under Nayib Bukele, the country has drastically reversed decades of gang violence and murder by pursuing an extremely harsh approach to imprisonment, placing around 2% of the population in jail in an attempt to crush the gangs. The results speak for themselves, with El Salvador now having a lower murder rate than Canada and Bukele becoming one of the most popular politicians in the world. Despite accusations of authoritarian behaviour, there is little doubt that Bukele would sweep any open and honest election.
An article in the American Affairs Journal casts doubt on one of the tenets of the Bukele approach: that mass imprisonment has not had nearly as dramatic effect as simple negotiation with gangs for reductions in violence. As such, Latin American nations which have tried to emulate Bukele have not been able to replicate the success, suggesting that "just be radically tough" might not be the panacea that Western proponents hope for.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/05/the-bukele-model-and-the-future-of-el-salvador/
The success of Bukele:
Not long ago, El Salvador was considered to be one of the most dangerous countries on the planet, on par with war-ravaged Syria and Somalia. Today, El Salvador’s homicide rate rivals the likes of Canada following the success of a still ongoing state of exception that has locked up close to seventy-five thousand people, or about 2 percent of the country’s population. Unsurprisingly, Bukele has drawn admirers from throughout the Americas, particularly—though not exclusively—on the political right.
Initial attempts to rein in violence through tough on crime approaches:
Consecutive right-wing governments in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala tried and retried mano dura (or “iron fist”) policies in order to combat the gangs: declaring states of exception, deploying military anti-gang squads, and engaging in mass arrests—to no avail. In El Salvador, the conservative National Republican Alliance (arena) saw homicides soar over the course of four consecutive presidential administrations between 1989 and 2009. In 2004, president Antonio Saca (2004–9) echoed Honduras’s Ricardo Maduro (2002–6) by introducing a “Super Mano Dura” plan following the failure of ordinary mano dura policies
Bukele's secret weapon:
Upon taking the presidency, the FMLN tried its hand at controlling gang violence by other means...national and municipal officials of the FMLN began negotiating with leaders of MS-13 and Barrio 18 in prison. Imprisoned gang members would receive special privileges and benefits from the government; in exchange, the gangs would agree to limit violence among themselves and against the state.
It would take time—and significant setbacks—before this approach yielded results. Between 2011 and 2014, homicides dropped from 70 to 40 per 100,000, before skyrocketing to over 100 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015. During this time, it was claimed that one of the most effective administrators of gang-state relations was the thirty-three-year-old Bukele...Bukele achieved a successful revitalization of San Salvador’s city center as mayor by tailoring and ultimately perfecting his negotiating skills with the gangs.
Issues with long-term success:
The decline in violence seen during the government of Mauricio Funes between 2011 and 2014 was quickly undone when homicides surged past their previous peak in 2015. This was no accident. According to various independent investigations, the 2015 spike resulted from disagreements between authorities and the gangs regarding specific privileges for imprisoned gang leaders
The main argument of the article:
The great irony of the president’s celebrated iron fist is that it is at best responsible for around 10 percent of the reduction in homicides since 2015. By the start of 2022, prior to the state of exception, homicides had already fallen to their lowest point in twenty-five years. A master at branding, the president’s famed displays of inmates, crouched, stripped naked, and organized in single-file lines are very clearly meant to signal to the population that its leader is tough on criminals. Naturally, they also serve to mask the less flattering possibility that the president is routinely cutting deals with the very same convicts. Rather than a simple victory of tough-on-crime paradigms, Bukele’s early success was more likely attributable to a skilled synthesis of both iron fist policies and conditional, negotiated agreements with criminal actors
Why did El Salvador's tough on crime policies succeed?
What explains Bukele’s success, and why is it that El Salvador’s state of exception has succeeded where so many others have failed? Contrary to the platitudes of many progressives and criminal justice advocates, the simple if also superficial answer is that incarceration is a crucial remedy for violent crime. More specifically, the elusive key to the success of tough-on-crime policies—including against white-collar crime and corruption—is whether or not they reduce impunity. The problem with previous iron fist policies in Latin America is that they failed to address the underlying weakness of the justice system in states like El Salvador
The attempts of other nations:
As of this writing, neighboring Honduras as well as a crisis-stricken Ecuador have attempted to replicate El Salvador’s success through their own states of exception. Notably, the left-wing administration of Xiomara Castro (in power since 2022) initiated a state of exception in November 2022, which remains in place. Yet while Honduras’s homicide rate declined to a thirty-year low in 2023, the results of the state of exception have been comparatively underwhelming, with the country’s impunity rate remaining virtually unchanged.
In Ecuador, the January 8 escape of Los Choneros gang leader Alias Fito from prison plunged the Andean nation into a state of narco-terror akin to that of neighboring Colombia during the 1980s. In response, the newly inaugurated Daniel Noboa declared a still-ongoing state of exception that has likewise taken pointers from Bukele’s example in El Salvador. Here, it’s worth recalling that Noboa’s predecessor, Guillermo Lasso (2021–23), decreed multiple sixty-day states of exception that regrettably failed to halt Ecuador’s rapid transformation into the most dangerous country in the Americas. Thus far, homicides have declined 30 percent according to government figures. Yet it remains uncertain whether any security gains will evaporate following the abrogation of respective emergencies in all three countries
On the weakness of the gangs:
There is, moreover, evidence that the country’s gangs have been weakened but not outright defeated by the state. A report from the Salvadoran National Police leaked in 2023 showed that only eighty-three gang rifles were seized by police in 2023, compared to 242 in 2022. Indeed, the number was far higher prior to the state of exception, with 321 seizures in 2020 and 508 in 2019—suggesting that MS-13 and Barrio 18 are actively hiding their arsenals.48 Reporting from El Faro has likewise documented credible evidence that the administration is still negotiating with gang leaders.
Conclusion:
Until then, the most likely path forward for the Bukele regime is a continuation of the status quo: that is, the routine renewal of a euphemistically permanent state of exception. It bears repeating, as both Geoff Shullenburger and the Salvadoran novelist Horácio Castellanos Moya have noted, that Bukele’s popularity and subsequent realignment of the Salvadoran state “enabled the defeat of the gangs, not the other way around.”53 The relative instruments available to democratic as opposed to autocratic regimes in Latin America speak to comparative strengths and costs of each mode of governance. Bukele’s recent victory has offered him an overwhelming mandate—one which has effectively consolidated one-party rule over El Salvador. It remains to be seen exactly how long the Bukele model might last or whether it stands to outlive Bukele himself.
The article also delves into the wider successes and failures of Bukele for the economy, but I assume the approaches to criminality will be most interesting to readers here.
sohois
10mo ago
Change "Western" to American and there's no way to view this other than a colossal victory for the elites who planned it.
They have massively bled a once powerful enemy at a cost of zero lives and with economic damage entirely concentrated in Europe, which has the added bonus of pushing European states into greater reliance on American natural resources, and the destruction of the nordstream pipelines will prevent any quick recovery in economic relations. They have perhaps permanently cut off diplomatic ties between Europe and Russia, driving Europe further towards America and bringing yet more nations into NATO, further encircling Russia.
Other than the fantasy scenarios of liberal Russians rising up to remove Putin and fully embrace the West, what more could the US military want to achieve?
sohois
2mo ago
Bioshock Infinite was a financial disaster because Ken Levine was completely unable to run an effective development team, it's really not any more complicated than that.
No publisher recoiled from failure; they were compelled to chase the live service riches all the way off a cliff.
sohois
3mo ago
This is the culture war thread after all. If there wasn't a culture war angle to this, it wouldn't even be here as a post - it is relevant because UK media and government figures are obsessing over the show, insisting it is vital to understanding young men and should be shown in schools, etc.
I saw someone make a comparison to the film La Haine. That film provoked plenty of discussion in its native France, was shown in a government meeting (IIRC), much like Adolescence. La Haine is now widely regarded as a classic film, but I don't think this reputation would have any bearing on a talk of whether it was relevant for the French government, or whether it had any lasting impact on policy and so forth.
sohois
2yr ago
Tbh this seems utterly pointless for judging anything about the wider "left-wing takeover" or even Disney. We have a list of declining book sales for Disney in a medium overwhelmingly known for movies. We have no comparisons to other books released at a similar time. We do have a comparison to a book series released decades ago, which is likely irrelevant in the current market. We have no analysis of anything else Disney does with the property, or Disney's own success.
You say this:
But it doesn’t matter for Disney
No shit it doesn't matter. Even if sales of the book series blew away the Thrawn trilogy that the author cites, it wouldn't even make a dent in Disney's P&L. Where's the look at Disney's overall financial health?
Every large corporation has issues with "fiefdoms" forming: is there any evidence that Disney is worse than, say, Ford? Or P&G or Salesforce or Shell or Walmart or Apple? Any evidence that left-wing or "woke" politics is causing particular problems for Disney over the pet issues of other large corporations
If you want to complain about a book series, go ahead. But I think you need to bring much more evidence to link this to any kind of issue with major corporations
sohois
2mo ago
Not to put words into the OPs mouth, but that's not what I took from the post. Rather, tariffs are an example of a generalized anti-automation protest which will provide an example for future PMC types to follow when AGI or similar eventually arrives
Just look at this sentence:
If you're worried about how the PMC will eventually sabotage the progress
Not how the PMC are sabotaging progress, but will do so in future
sohois
4mo ago
I feel like the simplest answer to your question is that yes, NeZha 2 is a children's movie, with all the baggage that entails. If you asked a film critic about Chinese cinema in general, I don't think they would have any trouble naming plenty of great films and directors (even if you completely exclude Hong Kong). Mass market stuff remains mass market, regardless of where that market is. You bring up Studio Ghibli as a comparison, but 90% of anime remains "I can't believe I was reincarnated as my sister's tampon!" and other such garbage.
I think it is fair to say that, for its size and wealth, modern China punches well below its weight when it comes to cultural output. Music remains completely confined to the domestic market, TV is shockingly bad, and even where they've had some success of late like in video games it's still very much imitation rather than genuine originality.
And undoubtedly, part of this is down to the repressive government structure in place, relative to Korea or Japan. If AI wasn't going to completely upend things anyway, I'd still estimate that it would be less than a decade before Chinese media started to really penetrate international markets
sohois
10mo ago
As a few others have mentioned, the success of Black Myth Wukong is something of a mirage: like 90% of its playerbase are just native Chinese players. I think this fact actually speaks to the wider problem Chinese media faces. TV, movies, books, music: putting aside the obvious issues of CCP interference, Chinese creators still have a big problem with overwhelmingly focusing on the domestic Chinese market.
If you look at the Japanese game examples, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy, these are very much products made with international markets in mind. From Software's Armoured Core series or Dragon Quest of Square Enix are both moderate hits, much more tailored to the local market, and those aren't even close to the weirdest titles that come out of Japan. Stuff that only appeals to the weebiest of weebs and otherwise is entirely limited to Japan.
The problem with Chinese media is that they are still stuck making that latter type of media. My wife watches a lot of Chinese TV - every series is Ming-era drama, Ming-era xianxia, WW2 dramas, with the occasional modern series. The most recent Chinese films I watched were a 3D animated story about Tang-era poets for a family audience and a comedy drama about the pressures of primary school acceptance for Chinese children. The former was probably the best possible family film about Tang-era poetry you could possibly make, but it was still a film about Tang-era poetry.
MiHoYo's popular titles - Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zero - caught on in many ways because they just aped Japanese anime styling to the extent that initial players would have no idea they are Chinese made. I played a lot of Chinese gacha and other phone games in the past, and they were nowhere near as accessible as those titles.
When you can have a hit on the scale of Wukong without doing anything to appeal to international audiences, why would you even bother? Perhaps the future is that China has a breakout film like Parasite or Shoplifting, or a game series like Yakuza or Persona, which are still heavily Chinese but can cross borders, and that kickstarts wider interest.
sohois
11mo ago
I'll echo what AshLael posted and state that the handful of trans people I've met IRL have all been perfectly fine. Some passed ok, some didn't. None struck me as fetishists or AGP. And none seemed to particularly care about "trans issues" that you would see online.
It has led me to conclude that online trans activists are a huge net negative for trans people in general. I wonder if a big advantage for gays and lesbians is that the internet didn't exist for the majority of their activist eras, thus most people would never encounter the weird and disturbing subcultures that mostly stuck to small enclaves in major cities.
sohois
2yr ago
It's entirely because they have the World Cup. You don't see anyone really going after the likes of Kuwait or the UAE.
sohois
1yr ago
Evaporative cooling of group beliefs. It's always going to be difficult for left wingers or liberals to post amongst a much greater proportion of opponents, which means they leave, which means the proportions become even more slanted, which means more leave, and so on.
It was a regular complaint on the subreddit that the posting populace was excessively slanted, but there was at least still the possibility of new entrants to keep it from tipping completely out of balance.
sohois
2yr ago
There's actually a far more interesting example than Boris: Kwasi Kwarteng, the recently departed chancellor.
Kwarteng has a double first & a PhD from Cambridge, and was a Kennedy scholar at Harvard. Unlike Boris and most other politicians, his degrees weren't in PPE and other broad subjects, but in economics, so he should have been primed for a position as chancellor. He even had relevant experience in hedge funds, rather than just being a former journalist, again like so many other politicians.
Kwarteng might well have the most impressive academic achievements of anyone in the House of Parliament today. And yet he blundered terribly with his mini-budget, seemingly unaware that the markets would not look kindly to low-tax and high-spend in the middle of major economic turbulence.
How exactly did someone who is probably top 1% in intelligence and in a relevant area for his skillset perform so poorly? At least with someone like Robert McNamara you can point to the Vietnam war being a very complex and difficult issue.
sohois
2yr ago
That's just the subreddit though. ACX isn't mentioned anywhere, though I'm sure that the open threads contain plenty of things that could be deemed objectionable
sohois
1mo ago
I don't know if I ever thought of it this way, but now I kind of can't unsee it. I genuinely wonder if Zoomers will end up feeling bitter towards Millennials like me in much the same way we feel in many cases bitter towards Boomers, but instead of a grudge over amassing self-serving stock market wealth and monopolizing limited housing stock, it's despairing over the perhaps mishandled human-technological interaction surface that emerged after Millennial founders and users created the modern mobile-social-internet landscape.
You're skipping a generation there. While a lot of current addictive internet creations are millennial, the earliest examples are Gen X. Google, Youtube, and Myspace/Friendster were all Gen X. Ditto some of the early hyper-addictive video games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, and of course the smart phones themselves.
sohois
3mo ago
But the the rest boils down to where do my kids go to start making money?
This answer depends a lot on how old your kids are, no? If they are 16 and looking at university pathways, then there aren't clear answers. If they are 6 and still dreaming of being astronauts etc., then you're just going to wait and see. If AI progress stalls soon, then you'll know that coding, graphic design, and most "writing" occupations are a no go, but there will still be plenty of other positions. Nothing wrong with the old middle class staples like accountants, architects, maybe lawyers if AI doesn't get good enough.
This is probably too "boo outgroup", but given the direct relation I felt it was probably worth sharing.
Our once and former (?) moderator TracingWoodgrains has been called out as "a sociopathic troll" who exists to create anti-transgender drama. This is according to transgendermap.com, a pro-trans website which has built a list of communities toxic to the transgender movement.
The focus on Trace comes from their look at Blocked and Reported, and includes a list of ideologically affiliated subreddits, including:
It seems that the move came at the right time, since if we weren't particularly noticeable before, we likely are now.
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