veqq
2d ago
We don't live in ancapistan so we have to accept some government services given away at below market rates
A fun thought experiment is analyzing everything concretely done in an economic sector and redoing the cluster analysis. Existing clusters (companies) should be profitable and do many unprofitable things along the way (which they might argue ultimately help the bottom line) but you can reslice in different ways to share some services or remove things which merely compete without value add (e.g. advertising to counter the competition's ads). It's a bit difficult to determine what's ultimately accreative economic activity, just looking at the current clustering.
In a different world, with better policing/less crime making public transit more user friendly and with some union busting, to allow low hanging cost savings like train automation, the relative subsidies could fall while the social benefit grows - and the overall economy would waste less on transportation: roads are one thing, but car's depreciate quickly. Just imagine where we'd be with 7 decades of compounded investments instead!
veqq
2d ago
Tribal clan systems (Arabs, Afghans) are incompatible with democracy.
You don't think they're more similar to the original American representative yeoman democracy pre-1840 or so? In form they seem similar, just without the high literacy and civic engagement the American colonies always enjoyed.
veqq
2d ago
Italy is still mostly run by Italians, Spain mostly by Spaniard
It's insightful to analyze Europe(an countries) by individual provinces; the nation states are mostly rather modern of course. Bavaria, Catalonia, Ile de France, Rhone-Alpes, Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy (cf. blue banana, four motors of Europe etc. and Europe of 100 Flags)
veqq
2d ago
Trump's anxieties and reckless tantrums are creating the very conditions that the US is trying to delay.
Verily! As with his 1st term, I remain convinced Trump is a Chinese agent. His every single action but strengthens China and weakens the US (while of course grandstanding otherwise.)
veqq
2d ago
Meanwhile actual Europeans see them as a bunch of borderline-savages
I think this applied to both Americans and Russians.
veqq
2d ago
What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope?
Byzantine Egypt before the Arabs, 18th and 19th century Hungarian and Polish leadership and national heroes constantly worked with and fought for the Ottomans...
- one of Poland's 3 national poets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Mickiewicz
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Celalettin_Pasha
- Formed a full Polish cavalry division for the Ottomans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Stanis%C5%82aw_Zamoyski
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C5%82_Czajkowski
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teofil_Lapinski
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_Kmety
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Saint_Clair
Many thousands of examples, the Hungarian ones are mostly in Hungarian only though:
veqq
2d ago
That I, a non-American, had to make the top level post was evidence enough that it's of secondary interest at best.
You effort's laudable. I've begun a few times, but stop as soon as I consider the audience. Others have tried. I'll disengage with most of the internet/noosphere again, as I did some years back.
veqq
3d ago
I feel far closer to being Chinese than Indian just in ethnic/biological terms etc. But culturally? The PRC's partial deracination makes it easier than before! And well, Chinese culture seems easier than e.g. Pakistani (I mean this as closer than India, because of Abrahamic religion etc.)
A perfect example of my point, they are the same language but were not unified etc. rather colonized and converted by other areas - and very recently. By 1860, 40% of Frenchmen still spoke Occitan with a literary history older than French and a Nobel prize in literature in 1904. Catalonia recently had an independence referendum. In 1792, 10% of modern France spoke French and it took 150 years to eliminate/kill off minority languages.
Not just Austria, but even Bavaria and the rest of Southern Germany had their own standard until the late 18th century. Some of the Northern dialects until today have maintained their own standard: Dutch, which Germany had to explicitly erradicate in its own areas.
Even today, no one speaks standard Italian without an accent. The "dialects" remain very strong and heavily color speech in colloquial use.
These are standards imposed over various dialects and often larger speakerships, but there's inherent cultural and linguistic bonds leading to the current clustering. The regional identities are far older (often the regions aren't conncted to current administrative boundaries). In a different world, a lattice of sovereign regions where people spoke e.g. a panromance or panslavic standard readily comprehensible to all speakers (indeed often easier to comprehend than many existing neighboring varieties) could have been possible.
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