crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
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crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
4d ago
Being a warlord has a certain skin in the game that you are staking your life and fortune on your own martial prowess, while a poet can write crappy poems for the rest of their lives and only be slightly risking their lives against the outrage of the literati.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
5d ago
Regardless of whether or not that is a fallacy, it's what the Israelis sincerely believe, after having all of their previous offers for peace rejected. Now, you can say that they're wrong to believe that way, but to hold any other position in Israel is politically a non-starter.
The current genocidaires of China (by internment), Iran (by ethnic displacement) and North Korea (by starvation) are currently suffering zero consequences for their actions. Suppose that yes, Israel is stuck with such a charge. So what? That's not a strategy, that's a tactic, one that is failing. If your logic is then 'the Jews will be ashamed, and everyone will embargo them into dissolution' then it is incomplete. Who, if anyone, would try and enforce any consequence?
The Arabs aren't lining up to invade Israel. Certainly, the Europeans lack the capacity. Indeed, the expected behavior of the international community to an active genocide is to do nothing and fiercely regret its aftermath.
But that's ceding the point, and accepting the charge on face value. If they are at war, then they are not responsible for feeding the enemy's civilians. The Allies didn't worry themselves about their enemy's starving civilians. Neither did the Axis. If they are not at war, and they are policing occupied territory, then they can distribute aid as they wish. They don't need to feed those who are waging a guerilla war against them, or incorporate them into their aid mechanism. The Americans didn't worry themselves about feeding the Taliban.
So which one is it?
Israel is a small country, but Gaza is even smaller. It is perfectly possible for them to enforce a complete blockade on their terms. This is not something any other colonial occupying power has had the power to accomplish. Israel wants a total and complete surrender, unconditional and without third party mediation. The longer it takes, the worse the Palestinian people will suffer. They want a political solution that solves the Gaza problem forever, no matter how much the international community calls them war criminals. What do they care? They're already a pariah state to half the world.
They're never going to return back to the status quo. UNWRA and the NGOs will never be allowed back. Using food as a tool for regime change isn't moral in the least, but then again, kidnapping civilians for use as hostages at the bargaining table isn't moral, either.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
6d ago
Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.
Okay, I can hear you sighing already. But before you look away, let's talk about Clausewitz.
War is a continuation of politics by other means. In our ideological age, where everything is political, it may not seem profound: but it establishes a commonality between the military and civilian where analogies can be made. Like, 'what if we have no ability to fight a war, but continue it anyway?' Could we just... filibuster, our enemies, until they give us the political ends we desire?
This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.) In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever: it was never at par, even in 1948. Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire. Not to say that they lack the capacity to harm the Israelis, but they have no military capacity to enforce political goals on their enemy. Even now, their demands for a ceasefire are entirely one sided: they are simply outmatched in every conceivable military dimension.
There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention. It is the only card they have to play. But now that Israel has control of the food aid that goes into Gaza with the ousting of UNWRA, time is no longer on their side. Their enemy will never consent to a return to the former status quo, no matter how urgently the international community chastises them.
Not coming to terms and holding on for maximalist goals may seem like a cheat in insurgency warfare. But inevitably, reality and physical limits intrude onto the nationalist fantasy. It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people. This conflict - indefinitely sustained by Soviet leftist dregs of the anti-colonialist cause - will come to an end not through some master stroke of diplomacy, but a famine long in the making.
Hamas sought to use international sympathy as a weapon, relying on the services provided by American and European NGOs so that they could devote all the funds they neglected to invest in their civilians into their military. Now that military is destroyed, they have no leverage at all. The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
As Calgacus would say, "They make a desert and call it peace." Modern problems require Roman solutions. The fatal Palestinian mistake was that they always assumed Israel would come to the negotiating table. After fifty years of fruitless negotiation, the Israelis finally have had enough. There will be no more deals, no more bargains. Just the short, terminal drop to destruction.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
7d ago
Noted.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
8d ago
If Marxism does not work in practice, it doesn't matter how elegantly his theory is postulated: no more than we don't have to read Mein Kampf to present a convincing rebuttal of Nazism.
As for commodity fetishism and LTV, why do people want to buy Belle Delphine's gamer girl bathwater? Subjective theory of value (STV) is that it is not labor or the raw materials that determine the price of the good, but the people buying and selling. Can Marx explain the used panties market? The collectable card market? Not without extensive academic arm-twisting or moralistic dismissal.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
8d ago
The Chinese have a parochial and xenophobic term for foreigners of all stripes, 鬼佬 (Gweilo). literally 'ghoul man' or poetically, 'foreign devil'.
It is a useful term for an malevolent foreigner who intends you harm, who acts disingenuously with lies and deceit.
A man who asks you to define your self-worth by the good treatment of foreigners and not the consideration of your countrymen is definitely a 'foreign devil!'
Americans would be well advised to rectify this appropriate name for such individuals, and recognize such people as for who they are.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
9d ago
There's a failure case, in between integration and remigration back to the homeland, that second and third generation immigrants feel like they belong to neither country: that you're fostering a nihilistic cadre of resentful young people with nothing to lose.
Just, uh, speaking from personal experience.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
9d ago
Full disclosure: I am of Asian descent, living in Canada. The problem is that the well-integrated ones aren't in charge of culture or policy: and you have the activist weirdos who gain positions of responsibility. And because in general liberal whites are kind of trusting, they take it on face value that they represent the communities they are from.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
10d ago
As a child of immigrants myself, I appreciate the liberal cosmopolitan attitude: many of the kindest and most considerate people I have met have been whites who took great pains to live up to the color-blind promise. And I do reciprocate those feelings. But many immigrant and children of immigrants do not feel as I do. You can pave over a lot of problems with prosperity and wealth, but when times are hard those attitudes will come to the fore.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
12d ago
Mhm.
I apologize. From now on, I'll just won't engage. Sorry, I'm being an ass.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
12d ago
I am frustrated with him. I go to all the effort of taking him seriously, and he gives me, what, a two-liner?
Not to say that there should be a minimum reply word count, but I've found AT to be infuriatingly evasive. He never, ever, addresses the main thrust of my argument, only sniping around the edges with snarky remarks.
He refuses to speak plainly. Honestly, at this point, I wonder why he even bothers. I would argue with him if he presented an argument, instead of constantly updating us on his twitter beefs. But he doesn't.
Unless he's willing to defend himself, he should stop making top-level posts. He has a substack, if he wants to sneer at right-wing dudebros without responding to them. Or whatever ideology he professes. So as far as I know, he hasn't even made that position clear.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
12d ago
You don't seem to understand the basic shape of a pyramid.
When the working class get turfed out of their working-class jobs, they don't smoothly transition into managerial or knowledge-economy jobs. Their communities died and once independent and hard-working people all slid into the welfare-and-fentanyl pit of despair. But you don't care about that. The fact they yearn for the old terms of their social contract is somehow a moral failing and poverty fetishism on their part, according to you.
There is no feasible way for the entire working class to move up into the managerial class for all the immigrants you seem to think are more suitable for these jobs. They are the losers of a world of open borders. They're not economic deadweight, they're your countrymen, for God's sake! You owe them your consideration, more than any immigrant or foreigner.
You can imagine Iskander Al-Turok, Qatari sheik, smugly and arrogantly say that Qataris are above the enfeebling drudgery of taking care of infants and washing toilets, as he locks his Bangladeshi maid's passport in his wall safe. What's the difference? What's the difference between an UAE princeling letting his hirelings die in the desert heat building soccer stadiums without a water break and a Californian farmer overseeing his Mexicans work sixteen hour work days?
If the people doing this work were their countrymen, they would not be treated so pitifully.
Why is this evil necessary?
With all due respect, given the choice between your respect and your contempt, I'd pick the latter. I know who you adore and admire: to be put amongst the ranks of those men would surely damn my immortal soul.
I've been trying to nail down what I find so off-putting and alienating about the way you express your opinion.
It brings to mind the social structure of the Qing dynasty, who puts the working class - the peasantry, workers and artisans, and merchants - above entertainers, soldiers, low-level bureaucrats. For an orderly and stable society to function, the scholar-gentry of the Empire had to give a level of respect to the masses who fed and clothed everyone. That someone has to do the hard work so that you can spend all day doing intellectual and creative things is a basic fact that is the root of nobless oblige.
Every elite class that has ever existed recognizes the need to respect their lessers for doing this.
But you don't.
The fact that your contempt is so nakedly obvious, and that you're either foolish or conceited enough to not have the grace to keep it to yourself. You are not a wise man. You are not an intellectual sticking it to the hidebound hicks who don't recognize your genius.
You are Grima Wormtongue.
All of this navel gazing makes sense when you realize that the authors want the freedom of the tyranny of the human biological condition: which, barring incredible advances of technology, is impossible.
They were born in a woman's body. It sucks in some ways and is great in others. Get over it. Being a man also sucks in different but not wholly alien ways.
They should stop whining. The world isn't fair, and trying to make it fair to satisfy their neurosis is impossible. It's out of their control in a fundamental way that can never be remedied. For God's sake, if there something to be stoic about, this is it.
Why do slaves pick cotton? It's obvious that they don't want to, and neither do white sharecroppers: but only the latter have the skills to do better jobs.
Answer: because slaves beat out sharecroppers because THEY HAVE A COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE. THEIR LABOR IS CHEAPER. IT IS LITERALLY FREE.
YOU CANNOT COMPETE WITH FREE.
Do you know why American workers are paid more? It's because their aggregate productivity is higher. And because of this, the basket of goods they have to purchase to live makes WORKING AT SLAVE WAGES ECONOMICALLY UNTENABLE.
IF SOMEONE CAN WORK AT A TENTH OF YOUR WAGES, IT IS THE SAME THING AS COMPETING WITH FREE.
You know who picked the fruit before the influx of illegal immigrants? AMERICANS! Very poor Americans, but your countrymen (I'm assuming you are American). That an entire industry is sustained by the systematic violation of immigration law is no mere accident or economic inevitability. The only reason this perverse status quo exists is for the profit margins of corporations and the electoral schemes of bourgoise liberals.
Going back to having one's food picked by one's countrymen isn't the end of the world. The job isn't pleasant. But if it paid a livable wage, then Americans would do it. Americans will do many unpleasant things for the right kind of money. Just not for the pittance given to illegal aliens.
No doubt you have some sort of smart alecky answer to this post already prepared, but I will tell you now that you're not fooling anyone. You're being ratioed (a term that as a twitter addict, you are no doubt familiar with) into the ground because your arguments are bad. Whatever you're thinking you're gaining by pretending to be retarded is diminished by the fool you are making of yourself. Then, of course, is the retreat into sour grapes. You can tell yourself that we're all chuds and we're ganging up on you, that we're all woke rights no better than the ones on the left.
That isn't the case either. But believe what you want. It's a free country. People also believe in lizardmen and astrology. You do you.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
17d ago
I'd be obliged if you wouldn't treat the Motte as some sort of twitter offshoot, where you pithily dismiss your opposition with short, one-line messages.
How do you think immigrant fruit pickers get so good at picking fruit, fast enough to do it for a living? They've been doing it since childhood. American children obviously can't do it (it's literally illegal for them to do so, child labor.) Why is a Mexican meatpacker hired over the American one? Is it because he is illegal and can't ask for breaks or agitate for a union because he'd be immediately turfed across the border?
You either are completely unaware of the reasons why illegal labor is hired, or you are aware, and are acting dumb. Either way, the manner of which you speak with such utter confidence on matters of which you know nothing is infuriating to an incredible degree. Your priors are wrong. The conclusions you derive from those priors are wrong. It's pointless to debate you because you utterly refuse to acknowledge anything that even resembles material reality.
An American worker cannot compete with a Mexican agricultural worker for the same reason he can't compete with a Chinese industrial factory worker: both work in conditions that are illegal in America! If your conclusion is 'let them work at the global median of worker's protection and compensation' then I would take a good look into a mirror and think on the morality of your politics: that is, if you still cast a reflection.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
17d ago
A lot of the current angst in the left is that a table with one communist and nine people remains a table with one communist and nine people, which drives them crazy.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
17d ago
Obviously the market is distorted by access to illegal labor, as much as a market would be distorted if people were allowed to own slaves. There is no inconsistency here. People want to compete in the legal framework of their country, under the same laws. An army of scabs willing to work for less in shittier conditions (that would be illegal for any citizen) would depress the labor market.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
18d ago
Let me demonstrate how irritating you're being.
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Sam Brinton."
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Anthony Weiner."
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Jasmine Crockett."
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask AOC."
You are not strawmanning. You are weakmanning. You are not giving your political opposition the benefit of the doubt. I have a whole list of leftist politicians, intellectuals, and academics that have said embarrassing and stupid things I'd like you to defend, if you'd care to play at this particular joust.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
19d ago
You could make an argument where all laws, no matter how trivial, have a material impact on the nations of men unborn. So on one hand, it is you, who have the audacity to try and do anything, with only the minority of people who are actually living. And it is I, who have the legions of uncountable ranks of unborn humanity, have the sovereign interest to prevent you from doing that.
You're arguing about the moderation of the forum, and the Motte's very ethos as a forum. This is neither interesting or productive. I'm certainly not aligned with the moderators in everything, but I didn't come back guns blazing, hot off my ban with a chip on my shoulder. What are you trying to prove? That we're all a bunch of chuds?
Well, let's say you proved it. Do you have anything else left to say?
I do indeed want ideologically diverse discussion place, but I don't think you're the person that fits that bill. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
20d ago
Hollywood was always a platform for activism but it was understood that it was ultimately a business at the end of the day. The people in charge of Hollywood don't want to be capitalists in the business of selling tickets and getting bums in seats. They want to be activists, full stop. Talent no longer cares about profitability or marketability and the executives no longer care about artistry or culture. End result: slop.
As a non-libtard who occupies a vague place somewhere in the reactionary spectrum, the main problem is that most liberals come in with the assumption that anyone who isn't a liberal is obviously some sort of underground cave creature who dropped out of primary school.
This is an exaggeration, of course, but not so much as to be uncharitable. I consider myself to be somewhat of a didact, albeit, not as well read as I could theoretically could be (No, I have not read most of the Greeks, or much of Continental philosophy.) But then again, most liberals don't, either. But what I do have is a high school education where I was brought up in to understand the liberal perspective. I grew up as a liberal. Indeed, for most of my life, I was the libtard.
I think I can say with some confidence that most people here are, in fact, former libtard, which is to say they are heretics to liberal orthodoxy. If we weren't, we wouldn't feel a need to be here.
It is a very predictable pattern. A libtard comes in. They snark. They snipe. They complain about downvotes. They write very big poasts on how We're All Chuds and Witches as they leave. I find it very foolish. I would not, say, go into /r/Atheism and complain that I am surrounded by godless euphorics. (I would be banned.) The atheists are armed with many rote arguments against standard Christian apologetics. Similarly, I am armed with many rote arguments against normie liberalism - as I suspect others on this forum have as well.
Getting past that is where the truly interesting conversations begin, but that requires knowledge of the rote arguments: which many drive-by liberals simply refuse to engage with.
Which is to say, if you wish to make liberal arguments, you have to work for it. You cannot rely on logos and institutional credibility alone. You must establish your ethos to your audience, demonstrate credibility, and communicate to the vibe - the pathos - of the Motte. It is a muscle that liberals are flabby and out of shape, unused for so long. It will get stronger with use. Don't despair. Liberalism's ideals is worth defending. If you don't stand up for it, who will?
If a thousand more Israelis died on 10/7, Gaza would be a smoking, burning crater.
It's not hyperbole to say that Israel has no strategic depth. The distance an American drives to say, Walmart (10 miles) is further than Israel is at its narrowest width. Even a scrappy band of jihadis with no air cover can hold such a small band for a few days. With hostages? Indefinitely.
Israel doesn't get a chance to make a mistake, while its enemies only have to get lucky once to do significant damage.
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