veqq
3d ago
Brilliant! This is just beyond the pale of stupidity.
I even think the described actions are probable and philosophically valid (but having many people assist with execution of the same office is a quite complicated and rather dehumanizes the office until the actual holder seems irrelevant.) There are plenty of historical analogues with idiot kings etc. Anyway, sliding all the way down the slope, unless Trump is flying the plane, deportations until the executive branch are illegal, yah enforcing murder's illegality is impossible because only the very, uh, lightning bolt which broke the stone on the 10 commandants, or the person who wrote e.g. §§ 1111 (calling murder unlawful) is eligible to detain or punish; but this person used a tool, a pen and we don't know whether someone else used this pen and was not... And can we just disregard all laws written by lobbyists?
Can someone steel man this?
veqq
4d ago
I don’t think conservatives have been in the cultural drivers seat since at least the 1970s
And what of the other 5 thousand years of human history?
you were not the subject of that comment
Ah, ok.
would doubt his ability to characterize, let alone speak for 'we' or 'the west,'
I read this as him coming to terms (at least starting to) with there not being a West qua actor with concrete goals etc. similar to whoever, a few weeks back, noted alt right thoughts about the deep state were all wrong, since it didn't resist Trump and just ...let itself and its consensus be dismantled. This is why, in my original comment, I mentioned Western traditionalists' growing support of China. Aschenbrenner et al. are case in point, self important little men plotting how to play the wrong game. I believe, in the past, OP simply feared Western actors might flip the board before we achieve the cosmicists' dream, but now believes the US lost the ability to stop it and only China still has the ability (by error).
view American geopolitical power as a means to an end
I sure see power as mere means (and believe OP does too). I like the spirit of this exchange, although I think it's built on a fundamentally unstable foundation (assumptions about what the author means instead of just asking him) and there are more constructive things than building it. What is your telos? What do you think the CCP's is (or at least Xi's)? Dito for any other relevant actors.
veqq
5d ago
because I think they will be able to get vital imports (food, oil) from Russia. Xi would have been foolish not to secure this in his meeting with Putin
Xi was perhaps foolish; China hasn't been willing to (publicly?) sign (further) long term deals (necessary to finance more pipelines) and instead enjoys limited flows from older contracts while with most Russian production capacity lacks a way to reach China. Further, they're reducing consumption due to new sanctions.
I have a pet theory that Chinese green hydrogen will cause a $80BOE ceiling on gas. N.b. heavy vehicles now consume over half of LNG in China. Now, it's just a theory and I am bullish on gas in the short term, but the financials on new projects are breathtaking.
@Magusoflight this, you see, is my "motive: trading commodities for a profit. As a long believer in some commodities supercycle to raise the next 2 billion people out of poverty, we're not seeing the same growth drivers but rather a decrease in Chinese construction aligned with long term government policy etc. I was rather shocked to realize that the CCP literally announces its policies in 5 year plans, which it actually does, enriching investors positioned to enable it. You jump to accusing me of "lying" instead of digging a bit deeper into something "well known". How do you know this? Do you agree with the same sources when they e.g. preached diversity, immigration etc.? It's particularly perplexing that @Dean claims my "economic narrative waves aside the property bubble" when I specifically wrote about it. Isn't OP's very point that we, the West, have lost, because we can't get our heads out of our asses, honestly look at the world and act? Hell, I'm not pushing the technological envelope and seeking transcendence either, I'm just seeking alpha in society's delusions.
@phailyoor I know the government takes passports in general (particularly for people working on financial infrastructure) but DeepSeekers have said in the last days that this is not happening. I asked OP if he has proof for it, because it would really solidify his narrative.
veqq
5d ago
as well as overreliance on external customers
Exports are less than 20% of Chinese GDP (and domestic GDP is lower because of accounting differences like imputed rent. In China, they use construction cost depreciated over the building's life, so rent is 2% to Chinese GDP, whereas almost 10% of US GDP is imputed rent; much of US GDP growth is just bureaucratically increasing what home owners pay themselves...Oh, and remember, as Trump says, China's artificially weakening its currency, which... decreases domestic GDP!) Japan and India rely more on exports than China. The US, EU and China are roughly equal in total volumes, although China's GDP is 2/3 of the US (or 4/3 if PPP).
China has a severely over-dimensioned property+construction sector and now also a severely over-dimensioned manufacturing base.
In 2015 the Chinese government already stopped emphasizing real estate and announced that it would cut incentives for constructing and investing in it. To stop the "disorderly expansion of capital", they purposefully deflated the bubble, e.g. legislating huge down payment requirements for housing loans, high transaction taxes etc. The expansion stopped a while ago and workers have been reallocated. (Didn't you read all those articles about China's real estate collapse?) (There was a popular narrative around ghost cities too, but they quickly filled up. China urbanized many hundreds of millions of people and still has 150 million to go.) (Freezing real estate, which holds the majority of household savings in China, lets them inject liquidity to specific industries without inflation.)
The industrial base is what you would call an asset. In the absence of trade unions, irksome regulations etc. a greater concentration of capital should reduce production prices (instead of raising them, as e.g. happened in the US) particularly as labor is often quite a modest part of the balance sheet in today's firms.
To paraphrase Rick Rule: "In the super market, when you see tuna half price, you happily stock up. But in the stock market, when your holdings are on sale, you freak out instead of buying more." China did load up on infrastructure. And now commodities are significantly higher than in the past decade, but they just pay their cheap loans off instead of building for 5x the cost.
The Information's claim that DeepSeek, a private Chinese AGI company owned by Liang Wenfeng, is implementing some very heavy-handed measures: «employees told not to travel, handing in passports; investors must be screened by provincial government; gov telling headhunters not to approach employees».
Is this actually happening and not just coping accusations from a dying empire? We've known for a long time they're ahead. But truly, where Liang last year spoke of Chinese industry seeing its place as only productizing, they see true innovation's around the corner.
American theory of victory
I don't believe it exists. The only articulations thither I've heard involve the Benedict option or deportations, but lack positivist goals. Hajnals of yore built cathedrals, today's don't even hope to build, let alone transcend. It's shameful what they've taken from themselves. This is the West's century of humiliation, but worse as the sell themselves to the youthful Chinese like African leaders to slavers. Many Western traditionalists, Christian nationalists etc. have told me they believe China'd be a better hegemon though, and welcome this. How insular. What of striving, Promethean urges? Does myopic Icarus now only build rocket emojis for his stocks?
How can we disagree? Seeing the new paradigm, my little mind just wonders how to amass and secure resources and continue my line, such middling human concerns. I even work finance instead of pushing the envelope. No wonder we've stagnated.
veqq
9d ago
without any coherent vision
You mean establishing a totalitarian state worshipping reason as a god (for a while) which forcibly conscripted much of the population (for the first time ever)?
fight off the whole of Europe
Historical demographics are quite different from today's. On the eve of WWI, Europe had 25% of the world's population. To copypaste an old comment of mine a bit later:
The idea that Napoleon’s odds were insurmountable in 1813-14 doesn’t add up numerically either. The demographics of Europe in the early 19th century were very different than they are today. The French Empire and its Italian, Swiss, and Dutch client states contained 56 million people. French-occupied Germany was another 20 million at least. The Russian Empire had 35 million people, Austria 23 million, Britain 10 million, Prussia 10 million, and Sweden 3 million. Britain had imperial possessions as well, but their governments were even more decentralized than in later periods and their people could not be effectively mobilized for war. So, we can see that the “inexhaustible allied hordes” are a myth. Altogether, the allies controlled 81 million people and the French 76 million. France also controlled what was then the richer part of Europe, and could more easily mobilize its population. Case in point, after the total loss of his army in Russia Napoleon had another one waiting for him in Germany already.
In 1800, metropolitan France had about 30 million people and Russia 25 million (including many Poles, just incorporated, who would support Napoleon.)
veqq
10d ago
There are many errors in the common retellings:
- in 1990 Ukraine's declaration of sovereignty rejected nuclear weapons
- in 1991 Ukraine signed away any rights to Soviet nuclear weapons
- in 1992 Ukraine signed Start I pledging no proliferation etc.
- Ukraine never had launch codes, command over the soldiers and equipment (the Russian and Ukrainian were still the same and working directly together under the CIS framework until perhaps 97) not that it had money to maintain it either
The Budapest Memorandum helped implement this, but contained no security guarantees just promises to vaguely help or not to attack.
veqq
12d ago
The Oranians stress only using their own labor for just this reason. Exploiting cheaper, outside labor, succumbing to Mammon's siren song, corrupts morally and leads to generational destruction like a Gothic novel.
veqq
14d ago
I just want technocrats who will build a thousand nuclear reactors, regulate industrial contaminants and unhealthy food, craft policy for cheaper industrial inputs, rationalize local (city, county, state) regulations and bureaucracy (e.g. a unified online tax or building permit system) and encourage our people and culture to prosper, like Lew Kuan Yew. I've seen nothing like this in the West. Should I build it?
veqq
14d ago
with the rest probably safe in Kyiv
Without security guarantees, what prevents Bucha, Makarov, Izyum, Liman etc. from happening in Kiev? We actually have more evidence of Russian atrocities against Ukrainians than Nazis against Jews in 1938.
veqq
15d ago
Edited, I'm sorry for expressing myself poorly! That was an actual question. I've not seen anyone advocate for leftist economics nor open boarders in quite a while (at most, someone saying they'd like to immigrate.)
anti-Trump
Most seem to be regular contributors whose red line Trump already passed (they don't trust Trump to fix demographics enough to overlook the rest.)
leftist
"More than two sides", political compass blabla. What does leftist mean to you? It's easy to object to them from the right (or wherever) e.g. Vance for not raising his children Christian/Catholic (his wife hasn't converted) (cf. him saying "my wife's children" and saying he feels terrible for dragging her to church.)
Personally, I criticize Trump from the industrial and commodity lobby, where he was bad for mining and energy in his first term (Biden was good for O&G, bad for nuclear and mining), wants to increase production (although crude's already around break even for many producers and the last booms and busts ravaged the industry) and ban exports. Lately, I oppose insane rhetoric about Ukraine and may appear to be a fierce defender of Ukraine; but I have 10 year old pro-Crimea comments, prefer Russian culture to American and Ukrainian etc. but I respect the truth and don't lie for position advantages in some great metapolitical crusade.
veqq
15d ago
Ukraine and Russia need it because we’re in a transition phase in terms of warfare
It's more so due to incompetence (in different ways, depending on the situation). A friend's writing a series on how "meat" appeared (on both sides): https://duncanlmcculloch.substack.com/p/meat-part-1-expendable-infantry-in
Turns out you can claim a 50 year old treaty had different words and your supporters won't look at it!
Trump et al. now claim China controls the canal, because Landbridge and Hutchison, Chinese companies, have port concessions nearby. It's some Art of the Deal crap to message incoherently and obscure your actual goal for theoretical leverage. The US charged cost for transit, but the Panamanians regularly increase transit costs (a free market between using it and going around). That was ok, until the LNG boom, where even though LNG exports (to Japan, Korea...) through the canal are limited because of wait times (only 60% go through, the rest opt to go around), they compose almost half of canal revenue. (Tanker transit costs about $600k.) This feels like US industry is being unjustly charged.
The Neutrality Treaty specifies "just, reasonable, equitable" tolls. Although the US Navy always paid, the administration recently wanted Navy ships exempted. (N.b. US Navy ships don't have to wait in line.) Brzezinski convinced everyone to support the treaty by stating the US could simply take the canal back if Panama closed it. Trump's trying to equivocate charging market rates with closing the canal.
Personally, I think ceding control was a bad move (just like opposing the Suez intervention in 57) but this has all the finesse and trustworthiness of a sleazy carny. Simply announce that the US is open to expansion, allow Greenland, Panama or sections thereof to join the United States as new territories (if both sides desire). Simply announce that the US wants lower transit fees and higher throughput at the same time (logically, how could this happen considering the maintenance and construction burden?) and negotiate from that. But no, the administration does not respect its own electorate nor its peers and regularly lies to them (whether out of malice or ADHD, who can know?)
veqq
16d ago
Do you actually speak Russian or Ukrainian? Can you actually show us ...Ukrainians suicide bombing offices?
veqq
16d ago
the rise of a new ethnic group,
How much have you read about 18th-19th century European state formation, national awakenings, the Huegenots etc.? In European France, French was spoke by 10% of the population when the revolution started https://books.google.com/books?id=jKX1TenIOH0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Sur+la+necessit%C3%A9+gregoire&source=bl&ots=3hG3zAtBfF&sig=7aqGkOkwSlxt3wRG-3mp4TMDbSg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1p5MUOGZLoWa9gS_sYHoCQ&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Sur%20la%20necessit%C3%A9%20gregoire&f=false
not based on shared genetic traits, but on certain cultural traits being emphasized more than others,
This actually happened quite a lot. People of all races became German in Central European cities, e.g. in the great immigration waves from the Netherlands, Scotland, Germany etc. after Poland was depopulated by the Mongols. Those city dwellers were specifically craftsmen as opposed to farmers etc. The aristocrats became French in culture (there were 2 waves of Frenchification in the 13th century and 17th centuries) (or German by blood, especially after the 18th century.)
With understanding he is quite o'errun;
And by too great accomplishments undone:
With skill he vibrates his eternal tongue,
For ever most divinely in the wrong.
veqq
17d ago
The fed's already changed US Q1 growth forecasts from 2% to -3%: https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
veqq
20d ago
the world that they don’t get everything for free anymore
Even for those not sharing the Atlantic consensus' liberal secular values, how does America's control over many of the world's largest economies constitute charity? Why don't you believe that it gives American companies full access to foreign markets, subsidizes American debt etc. contributing a large portion of American prosperity after the 1980's and especially 2000's deindustrialization? E.g. a trade deficit is good for consumers, for the normal folk...
veqq
20d ago
would have given the Americans substantial influence over the future of the Ukrainian economy.
N.b. it was only 50% of revenues from non-existent and infeasible industries, not that it matters anymore.
Remember Jade Helm and the FEMA detention centers?
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